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DONNELLIANA: 

AN APPENDIX TO " CjESAR'S COLUMN. 



DONNELLIANA 



All Appendix to "Caesar's Column." 



EXCERPTS FROM THE WIT, WISDOM. POETRY AXI) ELOQUEXCE 



IGNATIUS DONNELLY 



SELECTED AXD COLLATED, AVlTll A BlOGKAi'HY, 



By 

EVERETT W. FISH, M.D. 

Aulliorof ConipKHd <>f Chemical. Analysis aud The Grexit Puramid, aud Editor of 

The Great West. 




n^<. 



CHICAGO: 

F. J. SCHULTE & COMPANY, PT'P.Lisir>:HS, 
298 Dearborn Street, 



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" Aoi mnazing mail." — St. Pafl Globe. 

"A stujjendous speculator in cosmogony.'''' — London Daily News. 
'' Oiie of the most remarhahle men of this age.'''' — St. Louis Ceitic. 
" The most icnique fgure in our national history.'''' — New Yoek Stak. 
^^ America,, the land of '■big things,^ Jias, in Mr. Donnelly, a son vjorthy of her 
inmiensity.''^ — Pall Mall GtAZETTE. 



Copyright, 1892, 

By FRANCIS J. SCHULTE. 

All rights reservecl, 



JV. 



By IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 

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ERRATA. 

Part I. p. '61, next to last line, for " 1889" read '' 1869." 
" . " p. 62, 1st line, for '^ 1888" read " 1868." 
" " p. 83, 4th line should read " would not have been 
re-elected." 

Part II. p. 19, 8th line, for " Quincy" read " Quiney." 
" " p. 66, 9th line, for " tooted" read " toted." 



PREFACE. 



THERE is, perhaps, no man in the United States who is more 
talked of to-day than Hon. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota. 
For while one man may be more prominent in the political arena 
and another more conspicuous in scientific circles, and still an- 
other more talked of in the literary world, no one man, perhaps, has 
combined so many diverse fames. TLiere are thousands in Europe 
who are familiar with his name, as an author, who know nothing 
about his career as a statesman and lawmaker; and, on the other 
hand, there are many in the United States, with whom his name is 
a household word as an orator, who know little or nothing of him as 
a writer. One man believes in his " Atlantis, " another swears 
by his '' Ragnarok," still another is a convert to the " Great Crypto- 
gram;" and there are hundreds of thousands, on both sides of the 
Atlantic, who think " Caesar's Column " or " Doctor Huguet " the 
greatest book ever written; while there are tens of thousands more, 
who have never read any of these books, or scarcely heard of them, 
who love him for his quarter of a century's championship of the rights 
of the common people, against all the crushing power of Corpora- 
tions, Rings, Trusts, and the Plutocracy generally. He is indeed 
a many-sided man. 

When, therefore, the publishing house of F. J. Schulte & Co. re- 
quested me to prepare a biography of Governor Donnelly, I hesitated, 
for some time, about attempting the task. Not that a long continued 
political intimacy, and kindred scientific and literary tastes, with 
many visits to him in his own home, and seeing him tried under all 
sorts of circumstances, had not made me very familiar with his char- 
acter and writings; but Governor Donnelly's career had been so active, 
he had lived through so many and such important events, and had 
taken such an important part in them all, that I felt that it would 
require years of time, and a volume of hundreds of pages, to do jus- 
tice to his life and acts; and that anything I could attempt, in that 



6 PREFACE. 

direction, would be but a feeble and imperfect sketch, prepared 
in the hurry of other pursuits, aud unworthy of both the writer 
and the subject. 

It is in this view that I submit the following pages to the reader 
— more as an editor and compiler, than an author. A great many, 
perhaps hundreds, of short biographies of Grov. Donnelly have been 
published in newspapers, magazines and encyclopsedias ; and these 
show the public curiosity to know something about the history and 
character of the man; and I feel confident, therefore, that the many 
additional and interesting facts given in these pages will be 
acceptable to general readers, on both sides of the Atlantic. 

^^4. I beg leave to acknowledge my indebtedness to Hon. John A. 

■ tiiltiriau for valuable assistance in the preparation of this work. 
Judge Giltinan made a visit of several weeks' duration to Gov. Don- 
nelly's home, in 1887, and had free access to^allhis jjapers; and he 
selected and collated hundreds of the extracts given in Bon- 
nelUana, and arranged them in very much the order in which they 
stand in the following pages. The work could scarcely have been 
prepared without his help. 

E. W. F. 
St. Paul, Minn., October, 1891. 



DONNELLIANA. 

A BIOGRAPHY OF HON. IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 

IN THIS age of the world the lives of many great men become 
a part of history before the contemporary chapter is closed, 
and it often becomes necessary to write the chronicles of the day 
before the sun has reached the western horizon. Thus the history 
of the individual is often inscribed while the sky is still brilhant 
with promise and the day pregnant with events. 

That the subject of this sketch has attained a zenith at this 
date, no one acquainted with his powers can calmly contemplate. 
The suppression of his political activities, during years of vigorous 
manhtmd, because the beating of his heart would not silence, has 
schooled him for a loftier flight in the present great humanitarian 
movement, many of whose watch-fires his inspiration has lighted 
upon the western hills. 

Hence we put forth this biographical sketch as one who, witness- 
ing great and immediate changes in the world, descries a clearly 
defined ''genius " — one whose profound thoughts and masterful 
utterances have become guiding forces in the contentious elements 
of the times. We write not as one ringing down the curtain upon a 
mighty drama, involving human destinies, but as one who lifts the 
curtain upon another act, wherein the drama approaches the chmax 
of its power. 

Ignatius Donnelly was born in William Penn's famous old 
City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, 
on the south side of Pine Street, between Ninth and Tenth Streets, 
on the third day of November, in the year of our Lord 1831. 

His father. Dr. PhiUp Carroll Donnelly, was an eminent physi- 
cian of Philadelphia, a graduate of the Jeflerson Medical College of 
that city, an institution founded by the celebrated Dr. George 
McClellan, a man of profound mind and great learning, and the uncle, 
w^e believe, of General George B. McClellan, famous in our Civil War. 

Doctor Donnelly was a native of the parish of Fintona, in Tyrone 
County, Ireland. While yet a boy he emigrated to Philadelphia, in 
the early part of the present century. Here, on June 29, 1826, he 



8 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

married Miss Catharine Frances Gavin, a native of the District of 
Southwark, a part of the present city of Philadelphia. 

Jolm Gavin, the father of Catharine, came to the United States 
in the latter part of the last century. He was, also, from Fintona, 
Tyrone County, Ireland, and a descendant of one of the Scotch 
emigrant families which settled in Ireland at the time of the great 
English and Scotch emigration, to the North of Ireland, about 1640. 
He died in Philadelphia in 1826. 

Young, in his History of Christian Names, derives Gavin from 
the name of " Sir Gawain," King Arthur's nephew, the meaning of 
which was " Hawk of Battle." He says: 

" His name, whether as ' Waluron,' ' Gawain' or 'Gavin,' was popular in England 
and Scotland in the middle ages, and in the last-mentioned shape named the high- 
spirited bishop of Dunkeld, the one son of ' Bell the Cat ' who could pen a line, and 
who did so to good purpose, when ' he gave rude Scotland Yirgil's page; ' nor is the 
name of Gavin by any means extinct in Scotland." 

In Lower's Patronymica Britannica, page 126, we read that — 

"Gawan, Gawen and Gavin are different forms of an old Scotch and Welsh per- 
sonal name. The Gawans of Norrington, in the parish of Alvidestan, continued in 
that place four hundred and fifty years." 

The reader of Eobert Burns' poetry will remember his devoted 
attachment to his friend Gavin Hamilton, to whom he dedicated a 
volume of his poems : 

" So, sir, you see 'twas no daft vapor. 
But I mutually thought it proper. 
When a' my works I did review. 



To dedicate them, sir, to 



you, 



Because (ye need na tak it ill) 

I thought them something like yoursel'." 

De. Edward Maginn. 

Mr. Donnelly's mother's mother was a first cousin of the cele- 
brated Dr. Edward Maginu, Bishop of Derry, the friend of Daniel 
O'Connell, and, in his day, the greatest orator, controversialist and 
philanthropist of the North of Ireland. The New York Nation, of 
February 17, 1849, speaking of his death, said : 

"He was the earliest and most ardent friend of the union of parties. He was 
ntterly opposed to the antiquated folly of petitioning England. He was a believer 
in the right of nations to resort to arms for the defense, or assertion, of just claims; 
and if banners had appeared, last year, in the summer air, over the fields of Ire- 
land, his benediction would have Hailed them as they rose. The utter vanishing of 
all our brave prospects, beyond a doubt, weighed on his enthusiastic spirit, and 
perhaps induced that fever of mind and body which has ended in his death." 

He was a profoundly learned man. A gentleman who heard 
him speak describes him as possessing — 

"A mind stored with an immense accumulation of general knowledge, with 
an imagery bold, various and peculiar ; brilliant, correct, striking. His views were 
clear and vivid, and he had always a full and absolute possession of his subject. A 



BB. FT) WART) MAGTNN. f 

warm heart and a cool licad jiavc him that very rare ('onil)iiiatioii of stroiit-:. |n <!• 
tical eommou .sense united to a brilliant imagination and a vigorous poeti(^ t'auey."" 

The celebrated Thomas D'Arcy McGee, who wrote a biogra- 
phy of Doctor Maginn, speaks of — 

" His public spirit, his moral courage, his thorough identity with the country, 
his tierce eloquence, his unwearied industry." 

He adds: 

" His application to details made him, in some sort, the judge and legislator 
of his people." 

Thomas D'Arcy McGee says of him : 

"The continued negligence of subordinates, indifference of superiors, and 
insensibility of the government to the wholesale destruction of Irish life, at last 
inspired Dr. Maginn with that deep-seated abhoiTence of English misrule which he 
carried with him to his grave. ' For myself,' he says, in a letter, ' as a Christian 
bishop, living as I do amid scenes that must rend the heart of any one having the 
least feeling of humanity, though attached to our queen as much from affection as 
from the duty of allegiance, 1 don't hesitate to say to you that there are no means 
under heaven that I would not cheerfully resort to' to redeem my ])eople from their 
present misery ; and sooner than allow it to continue, like the Archbishop of Milan, 
1 would grasp the cross and the green flag of Ireland, and rescue my country or 
perish with its people.'" 

He died preniatiirely at the age of 53. He was really the great 
man of his epoch and country; and but for his early demise would 
have played a still more important part in the history of Ireland. 

He was an ardent friend of teujperance, having administered 
the pledge of total abstinence to several thousand persons before he 
became bishop. He was a strong opponent of slavery, a lover of 
liberty, and a profound admirer of the United States. But his 
hatred of oppression and sympathy with the wretched were the 
strongest sentiments of his noble character. In his speech, when 
elevated to the episcopate, he said: 

" Believing the poor to be the 'treasures of God's chm'ch,' I must have proved 
false to my vocation had I stood on the side of the powerful against the weak, or 
of the oppressor against the oppressed. The rich seldom want advocates — the 
poor often. Aly sympathies, 1 own, have always been with the poor and lowly. In 
this I have a bright example in His conduct who refused to go to the ruler's 
daughter, and went, with alacrity, to the centurion's servant." 

In reading his eloquent speeches, full of learning, vigor, imag- 
ination and humor, one is constantly^ reminded of his relative, the 
subject of this sketch. 

Mr. Donnelly's Mothee. 

Mr. Donnelly's mother died June 13, 1887, at Philadelphia. 
She was a woman of great mental endowments. The Philadelphia 
Star, speaking of her death, said: 

'• Mrs. Catharine Donnelly, of 534 Pine Street, widow of the late Doctor Philip 
Carroll Donnelly, was a lady of marked and admirable traits of character, and 



10 BiOGRAPHTCAL, 

beloved by all who knew her. She possessed extraordinniy breadth of mind and 
excellence of judgment, associated Avith great kindness and benevolence of heart, 
and all the womanly graces. She was the beloved center of one of the brightest 
and happiest homes in the city, and the gap in the lives of those who loved her 
can never be tilled. The poor will miss her many charities, and all who came in 
contact with her, in the daily walks of life, will grieve to think that her cheery and 
vivacious manner and kindly presence are gone forever." 

The New York Freeman^s Journal of June 18thj 1887, spoke of 
Mrs. Donnelly as — 

" A woman of rare intellectual force and unremitting energy, joined to solid 
piety. She was the mother of a family noted for talent and even genius in its 
members." 

The Philadelphia Record of June 16th, 1887, speaking of her 
death, saids 

" She was a lady of rare force of character, combined with other qualities that 
Ivin respect and esteem. She was the mother of a notably talented family." 

The Philadelphia Times spoke of her as " a woman of extraor- 
dinary powers of mind, great vitality, and beloved by a large 
circle of friends. '' 

She was seventy-seven years old at the time of her death. Mr. 
Donnelly thus speaks of his mother in his journal : 

"My mother was a great-brained, noble-hearted woman. Her life was one 
of sacrifice for her children. When my father died, she was still young and 
attractive ; but she took the ornaments from her ears, and, assuming her widow's 
weeds, resolutely devoted herself to the care of her family, repulsing the advances 
of the suitors who sought her hand. For herself she had no ambition and no van- 
ity ; she was the humblest of women ; but her pride in her children Avas unbounded. 
Active and powerful as was her mind, her heart over-weighed it. She could never 
have attained distinction, for all her energies went out in behalf of those she loved. 

" Her courage, resolution, perseverance and sagacity were man-like, but she 
never employed them for herself Her temper was cheeiful ; her heart tender, and 
the elasticity of her spirit extraordinary. Her energy was without limit. 

" She was a true mother. The wings of her spirit spread over her brood con- 
tinually, and she had no thought but for their happiness. A purer and cleaner 
heart never beat on earth. I cannot believe that she could be happy, even in 
heaven, if she knew that her children were miserable." 

The Donnellts. 

The Donnellys, according to Doctor Donavan, are an ancient 
sept, of Ulster. In his great work, The Annals oftJie Four Mast- 
ers (vol. vi. p. 2426), Doctor Donavan traces back the pedigree of the 
'' clan Donnelly" to ^'Niall of the Nine Hostages," monarch of all 
Ireland, slain A. D. 406. The eighteenth in descent from ]|«fiall was 
*' Donnghal, a quo O'Donnelly." 

The Doimellys boasted that their ancestors never wor i the iron 
collar of serfdom since the foundation of the world ; that they and 
their ancestors were clansmen ; and in the clan every member was 
held to be of as good Ijlopd as the chief, and might succeed to the 
command. 



THE DONNELLY S. 11 

Accordiiip: to Doctor Donovan, the Donnellys were originally 
settled, more than two thousand years ago, in the district of 
Tir Enda, in the extreme northernmost part of the island; they 
were probably descended, in the remote past, from some colony of 
Northmen who had landed on that wild coast. 

Not from any desire to carry the subject of this sketch back into 
ancestral shadows, deeply involved in the mythical, but to connect 
modern research with that Irish history approached, at least, by 
this investigation, we make the following suggestions: 

It was in this North-Ireland region that the ship of the Danites 
landed, 480 B. C, bearing the Lais fail, or stone of destiny, borne, 
subsequently, to Scotland by King Feargus, and now the coronation 
stone of England. With this Danish vessel came the old seer of 
Irish tradition (who either justly or unjustly gave origin to the belief 
that Jeremiah was buried near the Lake of Tara), and the fair- 
haired " Tephi," or Hebrew daughter. And it is held by some that 
the Saxon-haired, or light-haired, Semite-faced Irish sept sprang 
from this source, at the village of Tuatha-d'Danaan. 

From that point, on the extreme northern coast of Ireland, 
the Donnellys fought their way inward to the center of Tyrone 
County. They were a bold, warlike race. The head of the clan, 
according to Keating, was the hereditary marshal of the great 
O'Neill's forces. Fynes Morryson, in his Historic of Ireland, states, 
in his enumeration of the forces of the chieftains of Ulster who 
combined to oppose the Earl of Essex, in 1599, '^ rhat the Donolagbes 
(O'Donnellys) had, in their country, one hundred foot and sixty 
horse." 

Doctor Donovan says : 

"DoBuall Groome MacDoanell (Donnelly), the brother of the marshal, accom- 
panied Tyrone to Kinsale, where he fought with such desperation that he, a cap- 
tain of one hundred, and ail his vieii were slain." 

This was courage worthy of the field of Marathon. If all Irish- 
men had fought with similar desperation Ireland would never . ave 
been conquered. 

Francis Bacon little thought that the revelation of his wonder- 
ful cipher was to come from a descendant of one of the Irish rebels, 
who were giving at that time so much trouble to the Earl of Essex 
and Queen Elizabeth. Phettiplace wrote the English council, speak- 
ing of the great John O'Neill, that '' his strength and safety' con- 
sists, not in the noblest of his men, nor in his kinsmen, nor his 
brothers, but in his foster-brothei's, the O'Donnellys, who are three 
hundred gentlemen. " 

According to Doctor Donovan Queen Elizabeth at one time pro- 
posed to make John O'Donnelly an earl, but he refused the splendid 
offer, and stood by his country. 



12 BIOGRAPHIC 4.L. 

Doctor Douovan concludes his lengthy account of the Donnellys 
with these words : 

" All of tlie men of this family that I ever saw are remarkable for their manly 
form and symmetry of person ; and even the peasants, who bear the name, exhibit 
generally a stature and expression of countenance which indicate high descent." 

The Carrolls. 

Dr. Philip Carroll Donnelly's mother was a Carroll, from whose 
family he took his middle name; and, with pardonable pride, he en- 
tered in the family Bible, many years ago, a statement of the fact 
that she was a lineal descendant of the last of the ancient kings of 
Ergall, or Orgiall, whose royal seat was at Clogher, in Tyrone 
County. 

The kingdom of Orgiall comprised the counties of Armagh, 
Monaghan, Louth, and part of Tyrone; and the dynasty lasted from 
the year 332 to near the end of the twelfth century, more than eight 
hundred years. The remains of their royal palace still exist, sur- 
rounded by extensive earthworks, mounds and ditches. The 
race of the O'Carrolls was held in such high esteem that it was stip- 
ulated, with the King of all Ireland, that if any of the sept were 
given as hostages, they should, if shackled, wear fetters of gold; 
and hence the name of their kingdom, signifying " shackles of gold. " 

Of course, in these days, and this free country, such memories 
are very little thought of; and yet those who believe in the hered- 
itary transmitability of qualities of the mind and heart find a cer- 
tain interest in them. 

This, I think, is the same family of Carrolls from which the cele- 
brated Carrolls of Maryland are descended. The reader will 
remember the often quoted remark of Charles Carroll, of the Con- 
tinental Congress, in 1776. When he signed the Declaration of 
Independence some one said — for it was a perilous deed to do, 
and might lead to confiscation and the scaffold: '' Well, Carroll, you 
will escape, for there are so many of the name of Carroll that, if we 
are beaten, the government can never tell which Carroll it was who 
wrote his name there." Whereupon the bold patriot took the pen 
again and wrote after his name the words, '' Of Carrollton; " and 
there it stands to this day, a memorial of the time when men staked 
" their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors" for liberty. 

In Ireland, as has often been remarked, the native aristocracy, 
who, by '^ natural selection," had, during centuries, fought their 
way to the top, were trampled down into the ranks by conquest and 
confiscation ; and hence it is that so much talent constantly crops 
up from the Irish peasantry. An Irish king was as much in his day 
as a Saxon king, and possessed just as much power, splendor 
and culture ; and there is no reason, therefore, why the strong traits 
which made his race leaders of men should not reappear in his 



DOCTOR DONNELLY. i; 

descendants for many generations.* The world, moreover, is nc 
iirally curious, when any man attracts public attention, to inquir 
whence he got his characteristics, believing that " like must pro 
duce like. " 

Doctor Donnelly. 

Doctor Donnelly, the father of Ignatius, held several importan 
positions. He was one of the Board of School Commissioners, anu 
a great friend of the public school system. He was also one of the 
commissioners of the township of Moyamensing, in Philadelphia, 
during 1837, 1838, 1839 and 1840. 

He was one of the founders of the Philadelphia College of 
Medicine, having been one of the original incorporators named in 
the act of the Legislature of Pennsylvania. 

At the time of his death, he was the physician in charge of the 
Moyamensing Alms-house. Moyamensing, now part of the city of 
Philadelphia, was then a separate municipality. Doctor Donnelly 
owed his death to his benevolence of character. A poor fellow, an 
immigrant, was brought to the Alms-house, suffering from typhus 
fever, or •' ship fever, " as it was called. His case was so hopeless, 
and the disease so far advanced, that the assistant physicians and 
nurses refused to wait upon him, knowing the dangerous and con- 
tagious nature of the disease. Doctor Donnelly devoted himself to 
the poor man, and in doing so contracted the disease from which he 
died. 

He was respected by all who knew him, and was long remem- 
bered by the poor of Philadelphia for his many charities. He was a 
profound thinker and a great student. At the time of his death he 
had accumulated a library of several thousand volumes. It is a 
curious fact that he was a constant reader of the works of Francis 
Bacon, and this may be cited as another illustration of the theory 
that even mental tastes, as well as talents, are transmitted from 
father to son. 

Ignatius Donnelly's Education. 

The subject of this sketch owes all his education to the public 
school system. He was sent, when about ten years old, to the publi 
grammar school at the corner of Eighth and Fitzwater Streets, Phil 
adelphia, where he remained until his thirteenth year, when h 
entered the Central High School of Philadelphia, a very fine institu- 
tion, possessing a collegiate course. 

*And. it must not be forgotten that Ireland once possessed a degree of culture 
higher than any of the other nations around her. The kings of England (notably 
Alfred the Great) resorted to " the green isle " to obtain their education; and Irish 
scholars traveled to all parts of Europe disseminating learning and civilization. 
To this day, in France, Germany, aud even in Austria, you will find ancient colleges 
and monasteries that were established by Irish missionaries. 



n BIOGBAPHICAL. 

The principal of the school was, at that time, Professor John S. 
3art, the author of numerous books, editor of Sartain^s Magazine, 
the leading literary monthly pubhcation of that day, and a gentle- 
man of great amiabihty, as well as learning; afterwards president of 
Princeton College. 

Mr. Donnelly graduated from the Philadelphia High School in 
1849, and soon after entered upon the study of law in the office of 
Benjamin Harris Brewster, subsequently Attorney-General of the 
United States. He remained in Mr. Brewster's office until his ad- 
mission to the bar, and was a careful and laborious student. He 
worked so hard, the first year, in mastering the mysteries of the pro- 
fession, that his health was temporarily affected, and his mother sent 
him, in 1851, to Muncy, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where he 
spent some months, hunting and fishing, in the wild, mountainous 
region of Sulhvan County, then infested with panthers and bears, 
and full of deer and other game. Here he shot his first deer. These 
excursions restored him to health. 

In his nineteenth year he published a volume of poems called 
The Mourner^ s Vision. He has since been diligently engaged 
trying to suppress all the copies he could find. At this time he gave 
more promise of turning out a poet than anything else. 

Admitted to the Bar. 

In the year 1853 he was admitted to the bar, and at once en- 
tered upon the practice of his profession. He speedily built up a 
considerable business. In 1855 he dehvered the annual address on 
the 4th of July, from the steps of the old Court-house, from the 
very spot where the Declaration of Independence was first promul- 
gated in 1776. The Pennsylvanianj Col. John W. Forney's paper, 
then the leading journal of the city, complimented this address 
strongly. It said : 

' ' The oration delivered by Mr. Donnelly is an effort deserving of the highest 
encomium. The style in which it is written is clear, cogent and graceful, combin- 
ing eloquence of thought with purity of diction." 

Nominated for the Legislature. 

In the fall of the same year (1855), Mr. Donnelly was nominated, 
without any sohcitation on his part, by the Democrats of the legis- 
lative district in which he resided (his home was then on the south 
side of Spruce Street, above Sixth), for the House of Representatives; 
but he declined the nomination, partly because be began to have 
jdoubts about the soundness of the position of the Democratic party 
,:Jon the slavery question, but principally because he was very busy 
i paying his addresses to a young lady, Miss Katharine McCaffrey, 
a native of Philadelphia, whom he soon afterward married. 



HIS MARRIAGE, 15 

His Marriage. 

Miss McCaffrey was the principal of the boys' secondary school 
at Eighth and Fitzwater Streets, Philadelphia, and was generally 
regarded, at that time, as the finest amateur singer of that old and 
cultured city. The marriage took place on the 10th of September, 
1855. Mr. Donnelly's groomsman was Samuel S. Fisher, afterward 
of Cincinnati, Ohio, and one of the leading patent lawyers of the 
United States. He was Commissioner of Patents under President 
Grant. That 10th of September was " a red letter day " in the lives 
of both Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly, for their married life has been an 
exceptionally happy one. A lady correspondent of the Chicago 
Times, who visited Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly at their home, in 1886, 
said : 

'^ Nothing could be happier than the domestic life of Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly. 

Upon the occasion of my last visit to them Mr. Donnelly, in speaking of his early 

life, said : ' Wtien I was three and twenty 1 manied the oest woman in the world.' 

'" 'Yes,'siMd Mrs. Donnelly, with the ready wit which is one of her many 

charms, ' we both of us met with bargains.' 

"Mrs. Donnelly is the intelligent, sympathetically critical, and admiring 
partner of all her hilsband's eftbrts, and although the eldest of their three children 
is now twenty-eight years of age, they are still aifectionate companions, happy in 
their busr retirement, and in their sincere attachment ; wholly free from sentimen- 
tality, they demonstrate, to those who hold high ideals of what the domestic relation 
may be, the practicality of their conceptions." 

The celebrated Mrs. Jane Gr. Swisshelm, in 1861, thus spoke of 
Governor and Mrs. Donnelly : 

"Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly and lady dined and spent the evening with 
us. Our readers all know our opinion of Mr. Donnelly, Governor Ramsey's right- 
hand man in bringing our State up from the slough of despond in which they found 
it floundering ; biit Mrs. Donnelly is by far the most entertaining companion. She 
is the finest singer I have ever heard off the stage : and those who hear her can 
form a good idea of Jenny Lind. Then she read for us ' Lochiel's Warning,' as 
one might expect Charlotte Cushman to have read it.'' 

He Takes a Trip West. 

In the winter of 1855-6 there was a great deal of talk, in the 
East, about the new and rapidly growing West, and an immense 
movement of population westward followed. In the spring of 1856, 
[April 14th] , Mr. Donnelly, accompanied by his wife, and a young 
lady and gentleman, cousins of his wife, who had relatives living in 
Iowa, started west to look at the new world. Mr. Donnelly kept 
a very curious and interesting journal, from which I extract the 
following description of Chicago : 

Chicago in 1856. 

"We find Chicago situated on a flat, so low that they are busily engaged 
raising the houses above the level of the mud and water. The buildings, even on 
the pnncijial streets, are of wood. Everything has a temporary look ; it gives one 
iho idea of a great caravansary. There seems to be a large amount of busine!=s, 
but verv little comfort. That will come with time. 



16 BIOaBAPHICAL. 

' ' Here we are in the heart of the Great "West. All is hurry and confusion ; 
rapid growth is everywhere ; millionaires are as thick as whortleberries ; life and 
animation are visible on all sides. 

"Our old friend F. L. married a gentleman who is part owner of the 
' Young America,' a handsome hotel here. So, with letters of introduction, we go 
there. 

"The house, despite its grandeur, seems to have fallen into disfavor. We 
are lodged sumptuously, sleeping in a bed that would do honor to royalty, and 
waited on by liveried servants ; but the fare, although heralded on a gorgeous card, 
with the names of many French dishes, consists, when reduced to the test of 
reality, of beef-steak and lake-snipe. These latter are very abundant at this season, 
and sell, we are told, for one dollar per bushel. 

"We ride around the town. The city looks as if a gigantic board-yard had 
been worked up over night into a multitude of small, half-finished houses, and 
these had been dropped at random over the face of a dead flat prairie. The streets 
are muddy beyond conception. The sidewalks are of boards, in many cases high 
above the streets, and often dilapidated to an extent dangerous to life and limb. 
Yet it is a city of mighty possibilities — the great city of the future." 

The travelers reached the Mississippi Kiver April 23, 1856. 
The Father oe Waters. 

"Here we beheld, for the first time, the mighty river — the Father of Waters. 
We survey it with feelings almost of awe, sweeping on from its intercontinental 
birth-springs to its grave in the tropical sea." 

They crossed the river at DaveDport, on the first railroad pas- 
senger train ever draivn across the Mississippi River. 

The road terminated at Iowa City, then the end of the railroad 
system of the West. The journal says: 

" The railroad to Iowa City is in a horrible condition. It was built under con- 
tract during the fall and winter, and as the frost went out of the ground the road 
sank into the soft mud. After leaving Davenport, a beautiful and growing city, on 
the west bank of the river, we were a whole day reaching Iowa City, when we 
should have accomplished the distance in a few hours. Twice we had to leave the 
train and walk, with baggage in hand, past portions of the mud-drowned road, and 
then take a new train to Another mud-hole. The country is wild prairie ; two or 
three deer are seen in the distance. Most of the passengers are going to Kansas ; 
and nearly every man (and they are all men) has his Sharpe's rifle, or some other 
similar implement of civilization. There is a good deal of conversation in the car 
about the troubles and bloodshed in that territory." 

He describes the accommodations at an Iowa City hotel : 
The Beef- Steak and the Pickaninny. 

" By taking a carriage we got to the ' American House ' in advance of the reg- 
ular ' bus,' and with great difiiculty obtained one room for all four of us. The room 

was about six feet by ten. My wife and Miss slept in the single bed ; John 

and I on a quilt on the floor, with our feet under the bed. We had to put them 
there or out of doors. The rush of travel is enormous. The landlord and his clerk 
acted as chambermaids. I looked into one room, aboij^t twenty by twenty ; there 
were eight beds, occupying the entire room ; each bed holding three persons, twenty- 
four in all. The struggle for room and air was so great that we observed, in some 
instances, the middle man with his head at an angle of fortj^-five degrees against the 
head-board, and his arms stretched out, like a crucifixion, above the beads of his fel- 
lows. How human beings could live in such an atmosphere was a marvel. Dirt 
and discomfort were everywhere; We should probably have endured it all but for 



IOWA IN 1866. 17 

a pleasing incident which occurred at breakfast the next morning. The ladies of 
our party were seated where they had a full view of the kitchen. The cook— a 
large, black Avoman — had placed several pans of fried meat, read}- cooked, for carv- 
ing, upon the brick pavement near the fire. Her child, a little, eig'hteen-months-old, 
bow-legged, half-clad pickaninny, was toddling around, when it accidentally fell 
backward, in a sitting position, into one of the pans of meat. The mother rushed 
over, picked it uj). gave it a slap and a wipe, and proceeded to carve up the con- 
tents of the pan for the waiting guests. That settled us." 

They removed to '' The Park House." 

Mr. Donnelly left the ladies at Iowa City, and he and '' John" 
proceeded west by stage. 

Iowa in 1856. 

"Our route lay through Iowa and Poweshiek Counties, and part of Jasper; 
the eountiy is almost altogether treeless prairie. The roads are utterly abominable 
— rough and muddy to the last degree. Occasionally they are crossed by sloughs, low, 
Avet swales, where the hidden bog is covered by a carpet of grass, through which 
the Avheels of the lumbering stage are apt to' break. At this season they are 
especially bad. The traveler is regaled with humorous stories illustrating their 
character. One, for instance, of a man who, on arriving at the brink of the slough, 
found a stranger Avhistling. as if calling for something. 

" 'Is this slough sate ?' asked the new-comer. 

" ' Oh, yes,' was the response. 

'• ' What are you whistling for ? ' 

'• ' My oxen and wagon are down in there somewhere, and I am trying to coax 
them out.' 

"The accommodations are wretched. In atrip of one hundred and thirty 
miles, we saw butter but once, and then the specimen was floating at the bottom 
of a dirty saucer. The hotels are log-houses ; the fare, fried ham and bad bread 
(forty or fifty cents per meal); the drivers rough and impudent; the stages in- 
tolerable. 

"The male passengers, in the morning, usually fire off their revolvers and 
re-load. 

" This country will not do for me. It is a great and rising country, certain to 
become rich, prosperous and popular, but it is desolate and bleak, and the comforts 
of life are all wanting. The next generation will find it a paradise compared to 
what it is now. Trees are so scarce that even a bush is a relief to the eyes; the 
scenery is so monotonous that the sight of a boulder, on the prairie, furnishes the 
stage-passengers with conversation for an hour. The winds roar and sweep over 
the laud as they do over the ocean. I saw large houses that had been removed 
bodily from their foundations and carried several feet." 

After visiting " John's " father at Albion or Lafayette, in 
Marshall County, Mr. Donnelly left " John " to stay a few days with 
his parents, and returned alone to Iowa City. 

Two Iowa Families Coxtkasted. 

'• 1 took dinner at Indiantown on my way from Xewtou eastward. We staid 
all night at a place called 'Clem's.' Mr. Clem was. 1 think, from Indiana. His- 
house was of logs, but large and roomy and well built. It realized all my ideas of 
a comfortable Western home. It had a huge old fire-place, ornamented with 
'andirons.' The walls were hung with all manner of things: powder-horns, rifles, 
whips, children's dresses, etc. 

"It was a cold, windy night. I went to sleep in a bed facing the.glorious fire ; 
the room roseate with its flickering light. 



18 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

" Inteljigence sets its stamp every w^here. There is no substitute for brains. 
From the old 'grand'ther,' who warmed his shriveled palms before the fire, down 
to the hearty-looking boy who waited on the horses, the whole family bore the 
marks of industry and intelligence. 

' ' I have rarely enjoyed a night's rest more than I did in that cleanly bed, facing 
that pleasant fire, dropping off to sleep listening to the crackle of the logs and the 
howl of the wind outside. 

"The next night was a violent contrast to all this. It was at a place twenty- 
two miles west of Iowa City. A rickety, rough-built cabin; a dirty, cheerless 
room; a huge, empty stove, around which we gathered, vainly hoping to extract 
some comfort from its cold sides; and a set of villainous-looking louts of stage- 
drivers, lying around upon equally villainous-looking beds. A vinegar-faced old 
woman acted as landlady ; an overgrown slouch of a young one acted as cook ; 
while a dirty-faced boy filled the position of chambermaid. My bed-room was a 
loft; my bed a straw mattress on the floor; my overcoat served for a pillow, while 
the rain, trickling through the miserable roof, lulled me into uneasy slumber. The 
fare was equally bad. Molasses supplied the place of butter ; doughy cakes were a 
substitute for bread; while ham, here as elsewhere, was the unvarying substitute 
for all the meats. And all this was flavored with the most uncompromising im- 
pudence. One or two of the company ventured to complain, but always at the risk 
of being drubbed by the landlord, who took any objection to his fare as a personal 
insult to himself" 

Mr. Donnelly and the ladies left Iowa City May 2d, 1856, and 
that evening took the steamb^oat ^' York State " for St. Paul. Some 
twelve hours were consumed in getting through the Rock Island 
bridge, the force of the current being terrific. The boat was four 
days going to St. Paul. There were no railroads then north or west 
of Galena, Illinois. I quote again from that interesting journal : 

The Upper Mississippi. 

"The whole trip was delightful. . . . The meals on the boat are not to be 
surpassed at any hotel. We had a beautiful cabin, fine bed and polite attendance, 
everything, in short, that the most fastidious could desire. Deducting the value of 
the meals, tliis floating piece of civilization carried us four hundred miles for two 
dollars ! 

"Without, the scenery is magnificent — it is one unending and ever-varying 
panorama of beauty. 

"When we' first came on deck we were twenty-five miles above Dubuque. 
The river is full of islands, now overflowed by the spring freshets. Through their 
foliage we could catch glimpses of the glancing waters. 

" ' Anon, tliroiiph many a copse, 'gan peep 
The wandering river, wide and deep.' 

"The whole scene is beautiful, indeed. The black waters, the green islets, 
the guarding hills, the sunlight and the fresh wind, made it all seem like fairyland. 

"The river shores appear to rise as we go northward. On the Iowa side the 
hills are rolling and broken. The channel lies toward the eastern side. A narrow 
strip of arable land stretches along the river's edge, backed by high rocks, with 
their rough fronts marked by variously colored strata, greened by mosses, and worn 
by wind and weather and the uncounted centuries into towers and rounded pillars, 
and all the shapes of antique castles, Avhich remind one of Praed's lines: 

" 'Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine, 
Mao7 a ruin wan and .^^rey 
O'erlcoks the eornlield and the vine. 
Majestic in its dari: decay.' 

■' Ab we advanced we caught glimpses of the rapidly fleeting barbarism which 
for so many centuries has held these beautiful lands in thrall. We saw an old 



ST. FA UL IN I6d(j. 1!) 

Indian, dressed in a curiously compounded costume, — leggins and stove-pipe hat, 
moccasins and cloth coat, — hurrying along in a bark canoe, from one little island to 
another, as the great steamer moved slowly forward. 

"Although we had left Iowa bleak and bare, in her gray winter garb, with not 
a tree in leaf. Ave were surprised to find the trees cm these islands, hundreds of miles 
further uorth, covered with bright foliage. This was probably due to the moisture 
of the river-bed. 

"We have sailed into a new world. We have left the flats, the morasses — 
the old coal-fields — of Illinois, Indiana and Iowa, far below us. Here are health, 
beauty, majesty. 

"The blue river; the green islands ; a white steamer (.-The Ladj- Franklin"), 
steaming along the nari'ow channel in front of us ; while far along the western bluffs 
lie the deep shadows east by the departing sun, his yellow light bathing the eastern 
banks in glory. 

'•What a beautiful land has the red man lost and the white man won!" 

After describing in detail Winona, Prescott, Hudson, Stillwater 
(for tlie boat went up the St. Croix), and Hastings, as they ap- 
peared in 1856, Mr. Donnelly's journal proceeds to narrate that he 
and his wife and her cousin reached St. Paul May 7, 1856, He thus 
describes that city : 

St. Paul in 1856. 

"When I awoke the next morning, at about five o'clock, I hun-ied out, for the 
steamer Avas not in motion, and there, before us and above us, lay the bluffs and 
storehouses of St. Paul. The levee was crowded; steamboats were on all sides of 
us. Early as it was, men were at work on the levee, with drays and wagons, among 
the piles of freight. 

"We had reached the city of promise; the cynosure of all eyes; the new 
St. Louis; the youthful Chicago; the capital of the new-born territory of Minnesota; 
the ultimate practicable point of navigation on the great liver. 

" I hurried ashore. Everything was rough and new. 1 climbed the precipit- 
ous bluffs, overlooking the landing, and reached the level of the town-site. ... I 
hurried to the post-office, expecting letters from home. It was not yet open, to my 
great disappointment. The post-offiee Avas a little brick building which looked as if 
it had been built as a sample Avheu bricks were scarce. It was not yet six o'clock, 
and the office Avould not open until half past seven; so 1 returned to' the boat, Avak- 
ened my companions, and Ave left the 'York State'; not Avithout some regret, for 
Ave had had a very pleasant, comfortable time upon her. To be sure, the four days' 
trip had been somewhat tedious. The first day T exhausted all the neAvspapers on 
the boat, even to the advertisements, and then took to a diligent perusal of the 
Holy Bible, the only book on the steamer, which I read with the utmost assiduity. 
In fact, I Avas so devoted to it that the ladies on the steamer concluded I was' a 
clergyman, and they appointed a committee to request my wife to ask me to preach 
to them! ... 

"I had heard on the boat that the 'Winslow House' was the best hotel in 
town : so, taking a conveyance, we proceeded there. It was a fair house, but the 
rooms were small and the place too croArded for comfort. After staying there a 
day we concluded to remove to the ' American House.' kept by E. H. Long. It was 
nearly opposite the WinsloAv. and was a large, frame, rambling establishment, built, 
evidently, in patches and sections, at different times. The landlady. Mrs. Long, 
was a study. A plump figure, a pleasant face ; sharp, black, restless, energetic 
eyes, and a voice that rose to ' X sharp.' especially when addressing the servants. 
She was of Pennsylvania-Dutch extraction, and had all their thrift, and ten-fold more 
than their usuaf energv. She Avas a good woman, a thorough help-mate to her 
husband, and a trcracudou.s worker. Ew educatinn \ras iint cijual to her intelli- 
fience. She told me. with wide-open eyes, one morning, that there had been ■ mid- 
night buglers' in the house the night IJeforc. On another occasion she infonned 



20 BIOGBAFHICAL. 

me that the schools of St. Paul were not very good, and that Mr. Long intended to 
take their daughter— a handsome young girl — to Pennsylvania, and put her in a 
' cemetery.' But these little slips of the tongue were a small thing, compared 
with her many sterling virtues^ 

"Everything in the town is, as might he expected, crude and new. The 
houses and stores are generally small and of frame. There are very few on the 
upper half of the main street, hetween the American House and the steamboat 
levee. There is, however, a great appearance of growth and prosperity. It is the 
heart of all this region, 

A Chaeacter Described. 

" I met Mr. . He is a nondescript. His father was an Alsatian, an old 

soldier of Napoleon, living at . ... He is a small man, with a marked 

countenance and a droop of his nose that looks like a reminiscence of Hebrew 
blood. He is very illiterate. He has no breadth of mind, but great nerve and 
shrewdness. His knowledge of men, his cunning and his self-control are remarka- 
ble. When most excited, he holds his head a little higher and talks a trifle through 
his nose ; these are the only indications he gives of any internal commotion. A 
close and selfish man he is, nevertheless lavish in decorating his wife and chil- 
dren, in whom he takes the greatest pride. This is almost the only redeeming 
trait of his character. He is one of a class of men here who infest the hotels, 
examine the registers, get acquainted with all strangers, and, under the guise of 
courtesy, show them property which they have for sale, and till their heads with 
stories of enormous fortunes, made in a few weeks or months, by the rise in real 
estate. Their art is, of course, to hide the art — to sell Avithout appearing to want 
to sell. For this end they have accomplices and stool-pigeons — snufiy-nosed 
adventurers and fast young dandies — and they work their games with great skill 
and shrewdness." 

Five Per Cent. Per Month for Monet. 

"Everything here is inflated and exaggerated. The people are discounting 
the future. It will require years to give body and substance to their speculations. 
Everything is wild. 

' ' To-day Mr. was telling me that business was done here so differently 

from the East; and to illustrate this, he took from his safe a promissory note for 
about two thousand dollars, drawn by a Mr. Eandall, living here, familiarly known 
as 'Pap Randall,' supposed to be a millionaire; the note bearing interest until due, 
at three per cent, per month, with five per cent, per month, after maturity, until 
paid! It was overdue several months. I expressed the opinion that the maker of 

such a note must be crazy or a bankj'upt. 'Not at all,' said Mr. . "Come with 

me, and I will prove to you that it is the usual custom, and that the note is fully 
worth all that it calls for.' So saying, he took me to the banking-house of Borup & 
Cakes, and, laying the note on the counter, they purchased it as readily as they 
would a State bond, and counted him out the face* of the note, with three per cent. 
and five per cent, added, as calmly as if it were indeed an every-day transaction. 

BoRUP & Oakes. 

"This fijrm of Borup & Oakes are the leading bankers of St. Paul. Mr. 
Borup is a Dane; Mr. Oakes is a mild-spoken New Yorker. Both went years ago, 
as young men to the shores of Lake Superior, to engage in the fur trade with the 
Indians. Here they made money and married two sisters, daughters of a French 
officer I)y one of the native women. These young ladies had been educated in a 
Canadian convent, and are spoken of, by all who know them, as highly intelligent, 
able and excellent women. They are at the head of society here, and entertain in 
splendid style. 

"Mr. Borup is a man of marked character; short, thick-set, prompt, active, 
keen ; a great lover of music and well-read — a Napoleonic style of man. He is 
said to be merciless in business and generous outside of it. 



VITtTUE IS ITS OWN nEWAHlX 21 

" t like the people of St. Paul — wbat I see of them. They are all adA^enturers, 
but of the best type. There seem to l)o a great number of intellectual men con- 
centrated here. 

'• Mr. took me through the town and showed me various pieces of prop- 
erty. Mem. — A real estate dealer should always own a fast horse. In that way 
outlying property seems nearer the improvements." 

Mr. Donnelly's journal details his visits to Lake Como, St. 
Anthony's Falls, IMinneapohs, etc. He describes the way in which 
he and two or three other gentlemen, who were with him, got a 
room in a crowded hotel in Hastings.' 

Virtue is its Own Reward. 

" After taking dinner at Mr. John Bassett's, we drove to Hastings, and put up 
at a frame hotel belonging to the Bailleys, French halt-breeds, the principal owners 
of the town. Fare and accommodations are all poor; the house rough, and the 
guests of all degrees, from the rudest specimen of a Western outlaw to the Eastern 
capitalist looking for an investment. The crowd is veiy great, and we should 
probably have been obliged to sit up all night on chairs in the bar-room, but for the 
fortunate fact that we happened to get on very friendly terms with a Mr. Boyle, the 
agent or clerk of the Baillej's, having charge of the house. He is an Irishman ; 
quite handsome and gonial, and a good singer. We adjourned to a saloon near by, 
aud had something to eat and drink, and he treated us to some good music. He is 
a line specimen of the dark-haired Irish, Avith all their good qualities. 

" \Ve so won upon his good will that about 8 o'clock he came to us and told 
us, in a AA'hisper, that there was not a bed in the house not already engaged, but 
that one of the rooms had been given to a party of three or four rough fellows, who 
Avere drinking hard, and Arould probably make a night of it; and that we had better 
secure the room and lock the door. 

" We acted promptly on this suggestion. About midnight we were aroused 
by a terrible banging at the door. It Avas our gay fellows returning fi-om their spree. 
We refeiTed them, through the unopened door, to Mr. Boyle, and he, when called 
upon, told them that that was not their room; and, in 'fact, he expressed grave 
doubts as to whether they ever had had any room anyhow! This was followed by 
a great deal of banging and swearing, but it finally subsided, and the roysterers 
slept off their potations on the hard floor of the* bar-room. There we saw them 
stretched out the next morning. Thus were illustrated the great truths, that 
virtue is its own rcAvard, and that the way of the transgressor is hard. And with 
these reflections I quieted my conscience." ' 

He Lays Out the Town of Nininger. 

I wonld be glad to quote more extensively from this very inter- 
esting journal, did space permit me to do so, for it is full of descrip- 
tions of men and things and the new country, but it will be sufficient 
for me to state that Mr. Donnelly united with Mr. John Nininger in 
the purchase of about 640 acres of land, where the present village 
of Nininger stands (or rather where it did stand, as it is now only 
known to transitional Western history), and laid out a town there of 
that name. He returned to Philadelphia, and came back in July, 
1856, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Mr. Louis Faivre, of Louis- 
ville, Stark County, Ohio, and made arrangements to build the 
house where he now resides. 

, The plan of the town was his own, and it was unique. 
It proposed to set aside one-half the lots, to be held by the 



22 mOGBAPHlCAL. 

proprietors, Nininger and himself; the remainder were to be sold at 
the cost price, about six dollars per .lot, to those who would con- 
tract to make a certain amount of improvements upon them. The 
plan worked admirably. The price of the lots rose at once to one, 
two and three hundred dollars each, and men eagerly took the six- 
dollar lots and erected stores, mills, dwelling-houses, etc. Some 
two hundred houses were erected in a year, and there were con- 
tracts out for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of improve- 
ments. The town would have been one of the most successful in 
the Territory, but unfortunately, about one year after it was started, 
in August, 1857, the great and memorable crisis came which swept 
over the whole country. The town collapsed. The houses were 
hauled off onto the neighboring farms, or to the town of Hastings, 
three miles distant, and Mr. Donnelly, who had built a much finer 
house than he needed, and had held on to the greater portion of his 
lots, in perfect faith in the future of the place, found himself prac- 
tically a bankrupt, in the midst of the hardest times that had ever 
fallen upon the West. 

But while the good times lasted Mr. Donnelly pushed the town 
with unexampled energy. 

The Emigrant Aid Journal. 

He established a large newspaper, with an illuminated head, 
called The Emigrant Aid Journal. The first number was printed 
December 1st, 1855, in Philadelphia. Mr. Donnelly edited it. Its 
object was to aid the town, and furnish information to emigrants to 
the new Territory. It was a very able journal. It died in the fall 
of 1857, in the midst of the financial panic. 

He Establishes Another Paper. 

Nothing disheartened, he established, in April, 1859, another 
paper, called The Dakota County Sentinel, which was strongly 
Kepublican. This paper acquired a large circulation in the county, 
and continued to exist until the civil war broke out, when the pub- 
lisher, Henry W. Lindergreen (now pubhshing a paper in Geneva, 
Ohio), entered the army as a volunteer, and pretty much all his 
subordinates in the office followed his example. 

Mr. Donnelly's Scrap-Books. 

And here I would notice Mr. Donnelly's voluminous and method- 
ically arranged scrap-books, of which there are very many volumes. 
They contain not only details of his own history, copies of his 
speeches and public letters, newspaper clippings, but he has even 
preserved what others would have esteemed the most unimportant 
trifles, but which time has rendered very curious and interesting. 
For instance, I have one before me of 1857 and 1858. Here is a copy 
of the old St. Paul Financial Ileal Estate and Bailroad Advertiser 



A WINTEU TRIP. 23 

(J. A. Wheelock & Co., publishers), dated April 3d, 1858. Here 
we have a bill-of-fare of the Fuller House, for dinner, June 14th, 
1857, surrounded by wood-cuts, and showing just what the pioneers 
of that day lived on. It commences with " green turtle soup " and 
ends with eight different kinds of pie, two kinds of pudding and two 
sorts of ice-cream ! Here we have hand-bills setting forth the attrac- 
tions of the new Territory. Here is the original programme of a 
Christmas party at Concert Hall, Prescott, Wisconsin, December 25th, 
1857. And another at the Tremout Hall, Nininger, December 31st, 
1857.' And here is an old, yellow Mississippi steamboat ticket, 
with the distances from town to town on the river, printed on the 
back. And here is a grand, eloquent placard of the " Red River 
Land Improvement Company; " and here a still larger hand-bill, 
printed by " The Calhoun Steam Printing Co., GG State Street, Hart- 
ford, Connecticut," booming " Bois des Sioux City," a paper town 
on the Red River, never heard of after the collapse of 1857. Here 
we have an election ballot of 1857. And so it goes. These things 
are already very valuable on account of their rarity, and, if not 
destroyed, will be still more valuable in i;he future. 

And in this connection I would also notice Mr. Donnelly's 
library of pamphlets, of all kinds an J periods, neatly bound; a 
collection that will some day have great interest for the antiquarian 
and historian. 

A Winter Trip. 

But I am anticipating the course of events. After a few weeks 
spent at Nininger and St. Paul, Mr. Donnelly i-eturned to Philadel- 
phia. He had only one doubt upon his mind as to removing his 
family to the Territory of Minnesota, (for it was not yet a State), and 
making it his permanent home, and that was the question whether 
or not the winter climate was too severe. The Eastern papers, at 
this time, were full of horrible narrations about the arctic cold of 
the region. I find in one of the old scrap-books a story of a mother 
who went out sleighing, with her babe in her arms, to attend church, 
and when she got to her destination she found the child frozen stiff 
at her breast. These stories were set afloat to divert emigration 
to regions farther south. But Mr. Donnelly resolved to make a 
winter trip to the Territory, to test the question for himself. And 
so, arrayed in fur coat and buckskin leggins, and carrying a travel- 
ing robe, he started alone for his long and severe journey. After 
leaving Dubuque, where the railroad ended, the rest of the journey 
to St. Paul had to be performed in a sleigh, which was simply a 
wagon box, on runners, with a canvas cover, like a Connestoga 
wagon. It required six days' journey to St. Paul. The winter 
(1856-7) was long famous for its severity. The snow in Iowa was 
very deep, so much so that in some places only the tops of the 
upright stakes of the " snake fences" could be seen projecting, like 
horns, above the white expanse. 



24 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

Plating Caeds for the Road. 

The roads were beaten hard by travel, but only to the width of 
the runners, and on each side was the deep, soft snow. It was all 
very well as long as the stage had the road to itself, but woe to it if 
it met another, for one or both had to turn out and go over! A 
story was told of a travehng peddler, a bright, smart Yankee, well 
known on the road, who met another, as bright as himself ; each 
refused to turn out, and they sat for an hour, with their horses' noses 
touching each other, the thermometer down to about 40 degrees 
below zero. At length the Yankee said : 

" See here, stranger, it won't pay to sit here all day. What do 
you say to come over here and play a game of poker, to settle who 
shall turn out?" 

" Agreed," said the other. 

And so they played their game, under many inconveniences; 
and the defeated party, with good grace, turned out and went over: 
and the victor helped him to straighten up again and reload his 
sled, before he drove on. These were what might be called " the 
amenities of the road. " 

Bres^king the Ice. 

I have heard Mr. Donnelly describe the beginning of his trip. 
The sleigh left Dubuque at about six o'clock iu the morning. It 
was still black night. He packed himself into his corner of the 
stage, and could see by the light of the hotel lantern that the sleigh 
was full of men and women, principally men. The driver whipped 
up his horses, the runners groaned and creaked on the hard snow, 
and all was darkness. And so they rode on in profound silence, 
each traveler wrapped to the eyes in his or her furs and robes, and 
deep in his or her own cogitations; probably not very agreeable at 
such a time. Gradually" the wiuter day commenced to dawn, and 
the travelers began to examine each other furtively and with cold 
distrust. And so they rode for hours in glum silence. To a man of 
Mr. Donnelly's cheerful and convivial temper, this was very distress- 
ing. He thought, with horror, of the idea of riding in this way for 
six or seven mortal days ! At last he could stand it no longer, and 
addressed the crowd generally : 

" Ladies and geutlemen,'" he said, " this will never do. If -we 
are to ride this way for a week, we will all be lunatics ! Can't some 
one tell a story? " 

There was dead silence. No one even smiled. Not to be de- 
feated in this way, he turned to one after another of the men, and 
then to the women, and preferred the same request individually. 
No. No. They all shook their heads, and relapsed into chilled 
silence. Then Mr. Donnelly asked whether any of them could slug 
a song. No — no. None of them could sing. 



HIS FINAL UEMOVAL TO THE WEST. 2:> 

Mr. Uoxnelly's SixginCt. 

*' Then " said be, " I'll sing a song myself. " 

Now, if there is any one thing, among his varied accomplish- 
ments, which Mr. Donnelly cannot do, it is to sing a song to any 
recognized and established tnne. He often says that " any fool can 
sing a song to one tune, but it takes a man of genius to sing a song 
to half a dozen tunes at the same time ; " and his wife persists that 
he always sings " Bonny Doon " to the air of " The Last Kose of 
Summer." Consequently when, on that cold morning, he broke 
forth into melody, the passengers forgot the cold and the discom- 
forts, and the long trip before them, and everything else, and 
laughed till they were sore. 

But he had accomplished his object. In a few minutes some- 
body was found who coiUd sing; and then the story-telling began, 
and for the rest of the trip they were the j oiliest crowd that ever 
rode over Minnesota snow-drifts. 

The Retuen Home. 

Mr. Donnelly started back on the same route, ar.d after another 
■journey, not quite as long as the last, reached Dubuque, and thence 
made his way to Philadelphia by rail. But he had satisfied himself 
of one thing — the winter cold could be borne, and instead of being 
destructive it was beneficial to him. He had considerably increased 
in weight and strength, for at the time he started on his trip he 
weighed but 13.5 pounds. He came to the conclusion that Minne- 
sota's cold was a bugbear, and he made up his mind to remove to 
the new Territory with his family in the spring. 

His Final Removal to the West. 

He had intended to leave on the 1st of May, but the closing-up 
of his business detained him until the 15th. His departure elicited 
a number of newspaper compliments. The Bail?^ Pennsylvanian of 
April 4th, 1856, the leading Democratic paper of the city, in referring 
to Mr. Donnelly's proposed removal to the West, spoke of him as 
" young, energetic and enterprising," and as having earned for him- 
self" a high reputation for probity and integrity," and as '^a promi- 
nent graduate of the Central High School "and honorably dis- 
tinguished in the Democratic party." 

And so, with his little family, consisting of his wife and e dest 
child, then an infant of a few months old, accompanied to the depot 
by more than fifty relatives and friends, among whom were Hon. 
Benjamin Harris Brewster and other prominent personages, he left 
his native city for the new Territory in the land of promise — the 
Great West. 

He remained for some months at the Fuller House in St. Paul, 
bought some property in that city, which he still owns, and which 
has recently become quite valuable; laid out forty acres with John 



26 BIOGBAPHICAL. ' 

Nininger, as " Nininger & Donnelly's Addition to St, Paul, " and then 
removed his family to the new city of Nininger, where the construc- 
tion of his residence was still progressing. 

Minnesota in 1857. 

Minnesota in that day was in a strange condition. It did not 
produce one-tenth of the food consumed by its inhabitants. Al- 
though now one of the most productive portions of the Union, then 
the steamboats came up the Mississippi River, every day, drawing 
great flat-boats loaded to the water with piles of flour in sacks, 
together with stacks of pork in barrels. All travel was by the river, 
and the steamers would bear several hundred passengers at a trip. 
The usual state-rooms would not accommodate but a small part of 
them, and they slept at night on the floor of the cabins, on the tables 
and under the tables. 

There were scarcely any farms opened ; a garden was almost 
unknown; an onion was as scarce and almost as valuable as an 
apple; nobody j)roduced anything, but everybody speculated. 
Every tenth man was a millionaire — in his own conceit; and every 
other man hoped that he soon would be. On almost every window 
in St. Paul there were written on slips of paper, with pencil or pen, 
" Money to loan; " and money could be had in unlimited quantities 
at three per cent, per month! Every man trusted his neighbors. 
It would be regarded almost as a piece of disrespect to examine the 
title to a property which any man professed to own. Fast horses, 
fast women, gay equipages, display, high living, were everywhere. 
It was a holiday time, without any of the orderly restraints which 
usually characterize society. 

The Crisis oe 1857. 

" Nininger City " grew with great rapidity — hotels, mills, stores, 
residences sprang up in every direction. Mr. Donnelly tells, with 
great good humor, that he one day walked his porch, saying to him- 
self: ** Here I am, but twenty-six years old, and I have already 
made a large fortune. What shall I do to occupy myself during the 
rest of my life"? " 

But an event soon occurred which relieved him of any of these 
perplexities. 

In August, 1857, the Ohio Trust Company failed, and, like a row 
of bricks, each knocking down its neighbor, the panic spread north, 
south, east and west, until the whole business of the United States 
lay prostrate. In Minnesota, the catastrophe was overwhelming, 
for the Territory had nothing to build on but hope and ( onlidence, 
and the panic leveled both. In a few days the whole nature of man 
seeiiied to have changed ; every one distrusted his fellow; rogues 
sprang up in every dn-ection ; the creditors turned on the debtors. 
Values did not shrink ; they collapsed utterly. Millionaires were 
G'-rambling around to And enough to pay their board-bills. 



A REMARKABLE PROPHECY. 27 

Its Be^^eficial Effects. 

But while the butterflies perished, tlie sturdy veoiaanry took to 
industry. The town lot that could not be sold could be turned into 
11 garden ; the broad acres that could no longer be mortgaged, even 
at three per cent, per month, could be turned into tarms. Society 
divided itself into workers and drones, and the drones were soon 
driven out. The next year there was not so much flour and pork 
imported, and soon the Territory began to ship out its productions; 
and gradually the community got upon a substantial basis of pros- 
perity, which it has continued ever since to occupy. 

Mr. Donnelly suiiered with the rest. His vast fortune disap- 
peared; but he began to cultivate his lands, and soon he was seen 
driving his reaper in his own wheat-fields. 

A Remarkable Prophecy. 

In the summer of 1857, Mr. Donnelly was going from Nininger 
to St. Paul on a steamboat, and met on the boat Dr. Thomas Foster, 
of Hastings. Doctor Foster was a man of remarkable vigor and 
ability. He came to the Territory from Philadelphia, whei-e he had 
been a newspaper editor, with Hon. Alexander Ramsey, the lirst Ter- 
ritorial Governor, and had acted as his secretary. ' He was then 
running a flour-mill at the falls of the Vermillion River, near Hast- 
ings, owned by himself and Governor Ramsey. He was a natural 
politician and an earnest Republican. He felfinto conversation with 
Ml-. Donnelly on the boat, and the subject of slavery came up. Mi-. 
Donnelly quietly remarked: 

" In twenty years it will be impossible to find in the United 
States any man wiio will acknowledge that he ever defended, or even 
apologized for slavery." 

Doctor Foster looked at the young man with open-eyed aston- 
ishment. Slavery was then in command everywhere; Buchanan 
was President; Minnesota was Democratic, and every office in the 
State was filled with advocates of slavery ; it was looked upon by 
many as a divine institution. Doctor Foster said: 

" Well, then you are a Republican? " 

Mr. Donnelly replied : 

" I don't know about that. I have been a Democrat, in 
Philadelphia, but I am no politician; all I know is that I am 
opposed to the spread of slavery over our new Territories.'^ 

His Advent in Politics. 

This conversation was the beginning of Mr. Donnelly's career as 
a public man in Minnesota. Doctor Foster went on to explain to 
him that they were trying to keep up a Republican organization in 
Dakota County, but that the county was thinly settled, the Repub- 
licans few and far between, and the cause hopeless, so far as per- 
sonal success was concerned, as the Democrats were nearlv two to 



28 mOGBAPHICAL. 

one in numbers. He told him that in a few days they would have' a 
Republican county convention at Hastings, and he begged him to 
come down, as a voluntary delegate, from Nininger Township. This 
Mr. Donnelly did. 

He is Nominated for State Senatoe. 

He found a few gentlemen gathered from different parts of the 
county. There was no struggle for nominations ; the struggle was to 
get some one to let his name be used as a candidate. Under these 
circumstances, without any solicitation on his part, and very much 
to his surprise, and against his wishes, Mr. Donnelly was nominated 
for State Senator. The county was entitled to two Senators, and 
his friend Doctor Foster was nominated for the other place. The 
whole vote of the county was 1,690, of which the Republicans had 
about 670, and the Democrats about 1,020. He was, of course, de- 
feated. 

Nominated Again for Senator. 

In 1858 there was another election, and again the Republicans 
placed Mr. Donnelly on their ticket for State Senator. This time 
he decided to make a canvass, for the good of the cause, hopeless as 
the contest was. Accompanied by Archibald M. Hayes, a young 
attorney, who had not long before migrated to the new Territory 
from the State of New Hampshire, and for whom Mr. Donnelly had 
formed a strong attachment (for he was the soul of honor, and a 
genial and intelligent gentleman), he started out into the half- 
settled country. They would ride sometimes for miles without 
seeing a house or a man; and the men they saw were often Indians, 
moving in squads through the country, with their ponies, with long 
poles fastened like shafts on each side of them, the ends resting on 
the ground, and their squaws and children and household goods 
piled half-way up on them. The white people were gathered in 
clusters at certain points, and here the young lawyers, made what 
were probably the first political speeches ever made in that section. 
After a week or two of rough living, the pair started back to Hast- 
ings, and in fording the Vermillion River, in the night, they upset 
their buggy and rode the rest of the way into town thoroughly 
drenched. 

As showing the esteem in which Mr. Donnelly was held in his 
own town (Nininger) I would point to the vote he received in both 
elections. In 1857, w^hile the Republican candidate for Governor 
had but 102 votes, Mr. Donnelly had 143 ; in 1858 he had seventy- 
four votes, while his associate on the ticket had but forty-one votes. 

His Red Nose. 

I have heard Mr. Donnelly laugh over an incident connected 
with this campaign. He wore a narrow-brimmed. Eastern city hat, 



ENGOUBAGING THE VANQUISHED. 213 

and the sun beat down upon his face, and especially his nose, with 
full force. Mrs. Hayes, like a careful lady, was naturally solicitous 
about the company her husband kept, and one day, soon after this 
campaign, she said: 

" Archy, I wish you would not associate so much with that Mr. 
Donnelly." 

*' Why, my dear? " asked Archy. 

" Because you will fall into bad habits like him. " 

'' What habits?" he asked. 

" Why, drinking. " 

" Drinking! He don't drink! He never touches a drop of any 
kind of liquor. " 

" You can't make me believe that. Just look at Jiis nose! " 

Encouraging the Vanquished. 

This time, in consequence partly of the canvass they had made, 
and partly of a split in the Democratic ranks, the Republican vote 
was larger and the Democratic vote smaller ; so that Mr. Donnelly 
was beaten by but six votes. 

After the election was over, he issued a brief address to the 
voters of the county, dated October 18th, 1858, in which he said : 

' ' Fellow Citizens : After a close contest, the Republican party of Dakota 
County has again, with one exception, been defeated. Defeats are dangerous things. 
They unnerve and discourage the weaker party, and encourage and strengthen the 
victorious one. There are always those whose opinions are in a formative and 
fluctuating state, and these naturally fall into the ranks of the dominant party. . . . 

*'The Republican party is one of sentiment and principle, not of spoil and 
plunder. We have joined it, not for selfish aims of personal advancement, but in 
pursuance of our convictions that it embodies in itself the great moral and political 
advancement of the day — that movement which points to complete fulfillment of 
the purposes which made us a distinct nation. If, then, we have failed to accomplish 
political success, let us not be cast down, but, comforted by the assurance that we 
have done our best, gird up our loins once more, and prepare ourselves again to 
fight the good fight." 

Resumes the Practice of the Law. 

Soon after this, that is to say, in November, 1858, Mr, Donnfelly 
was admitted to the bar of Dakota County, and resumed the prac- 
tice of the law. Shortly after he formed a partnership with Messrs. 
Archibald M. Hayes and Oren T. Hayes, the latter afterwards 
Major of the First Minnesota Regiment ; the name of the firm being 
Hayes, Donnelly & Hayes. 

He Starts the Dakota County Agricultural Society. . 

Mr. Donnelly was the first to organize the Agricultural Society 
of Dakota County, and this was either the first, or one of the first 
societies of this kind ever organized in the new Territory. He com- 
menced his WM:)rk by issuing a circular, which was extensively dis- 
tributed through the county. The Agricultural Society of Dakota 



30 BIOGRAPHICAL, 

County, thus established, has held annual fairs from that day to this, 
and will probably last for hundreds of years to come. It now has 
fine buildings at Farmington; and the people of the county take 
great interest in it. 

The State is Admittetj i>^to the Unto>t. 

Up to the year 1857 the people of Minnesota had remained in 
the swaddling-clothes of a Territorial existence. On the 26th of 
February of that year, Congress passed an Act ''to authorize the 
people of the Territory of Minnesota to form a Constitution and 
State Government, preparatory to their admission into the Union," 
etc. A constitutional convention was called; a Constitution was 
agreed upon, and the people ratified and adopted it at an election 
held October 13th, 1857; and, on the 11th day of May, 1858, Congress 
passed the Act of admission, and Minnesota became one of the great 
sisterhood of States. At this time the Territory bad perhaps some- 
thing over 150,000 inhabitants. It has now about one million four 
hundred thousand. In 1857 there were 35,340 votes polled; in 1859, 
38,917; in 1890, the total vote was 240,892. 

Lectures i:n" St. Paul. 

On January 17th, 1859, Mr. Donnelly lectured in St. Paul, 
before the Mercantile Library Association, on " Style in Comxjosition 
as Indicative of Character.''^ The lecture was repeated at other 
places, and was highly commended. But his literary power was, as 
yet, shadowed by the evident development of political power. The 
word " strength " is more fitting than power. His political 
" strength " was the promise of great i^ower. The solid character 
of his mind; his loyalty to conviction; hisabihty upon the platform; 
his already apparent love for the common people; a mastery of 
humor in public address; the purity of his life, and above all, a 
prescience in conversation and public address that impressed his 
auditor with far-seeing statecraft, all combined to bring him forward 
as a future political power in the West. 

The great combinative elements of unjustly accumulated wealth 
had, as yet, built up no aristocracy. The term " Plutocracy " had 
not yet been constructed, and, however much individual " dollar 
despots" may have dishkeid his anti-monopoly views, they were 
unable to mold their antipathy into a political force against him. 

And hence the promising and reasonable entrance of Ignatius 
Donnelly into State and National politics was but the natural 
development of a fair morning into the noontide. However, the 
irruption of such an intellectual, power into the great maelstrom of 
political intrigue, alarmed the scheming political forces of the North- 
west, and before the sun was half-way to the zenith, a combination 
of those who were spreading their robber-tentacles out over the 
great State ^as accomplished; and the policies of the then formative 



NOMINATED FOR LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. ol 

Plutocracy of the Nation began to exhibit some of that tremendous 
power to crush which has since extinguished much of the noblest 
and best brains of the great Western republican empire. The very 
preface to Mr. Donnelly's life was one of inspiration ^o the pioneer, 
and of misgiving to the public robber, but his tremendous antag- 
onism to corruption and public wrongs had not, as yet, been dis- 
tinctly formulated or noted as an indestructible element of his 
character. 

Nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. 

The canvass Mr. Donnelly had made in Dakota County had 
attracted a good deal of attention throughout the new^ State, and 
his letter of encouragement to the defeated Eepublicans had been 
extensively copied through the party papers; and when the Repub- 
icans held their second State Convention on June 20th, 1859, Mr. 
Donnelly's name was urged by Doctor Foster and others (the Doctor 
was then publishing the leading Eepublican paper of St. Paul, the 
Daily Minnesotian), for the position of Lieutenant-Governor. The 
party were in the minority in the State, and they needed speakers 
to advocate their principles, and Mr. Donnelly had already achieved 
considerable renown as an orator. There were three ballots: the 
first was taken July 20th. Mr. Donnelly had 31 votes out of 125 del- 
egates. The convention adjourned until the next day; on the second 
ballot Mr. Donnelly had 53 votes; on the third, he had 77 votes and 
was nominated. He made a short speech thanking the convention. 

He was probably the youngest man ever nominated for so high 
an ofiace, being then but twenty-eight years of age. 

The Political Campaign of 1859. 

In 1859 there were no railroads in the State; the peopie and the 
candidates were alike poor. Alexander Ramsey (the first Governor 
of the Territory, appointed in 1849) was the nominee for Governor. 
He took his family horses and carriage (an open conveyance), and 
invited Mr. Doimelly and Hon. Aaron Goodrich (who had been the 
first Chief Justice of the Territory) to seats in it; and the party set 
forth to convert the State from Democracy to Republicanism. At 
Winona they were joined by Mr. William Windom, who had Just 
been nominated for Congress, and who was at the time practicing 
law in Winona. Mr. Windom has since filled the high posts of 
United States Senator, and Secretary of the Treasury, under Pres- 
ident Garfield, and again under President Harrison, and died 
recently while fining that post. Governor Ramsey has also been 
United States Senator, and Secretary of War under President Hayes, 
Judge Goodrich, who is also now dead, was, during the war, Secre- 
tary of Legation of the U. S. at Brussels, and has written a very 
interesting and valuable work, The Life of Columbus. 



32 BIOGBAFHICAL. 

The Hon. William Windom in 1859. 
Mr. Donnelly in his journal says : 

' ' Mr, Winclom, having no experience in campaigning, had an idea that he 
could travel from town to town by stage-coaches. This expedient did well enough 
for a day or two ; but he then found himself at a small town that had stage connec- 
tions with its neighbors but once in one or two weeks. He started out to find a 
horse and buggy, but after diligent search the only thing he could discover, in the 
way of conveyance that he could hire, was a great long-eared, venerable mule ; but 
he would have to ride him— for carriage or wagon of any kind was out of the ques- 
tion. So the candidate for Congress mounted his mule and accompanied the other 
candidates in the carriage. It was a painful mode of traveling to one unaccustomed 
to it, especially for the first two or three days ; and Mr. Windom was a handsome, 
modest, rosy-faced young man, who felt very much abashed. The worst of it was 
that the mule was of a social temper, and whenever he came near a cluster of 
houses, be it hamlet, village or town, he would set up the most sonorous and un- 
earthly braying; and the astonished inhabitants would rush out in alarm to find the 
future Member of Congress, blushing to his eyelids, bestride his long-eared com- 
panion, looking the very picture of mortification, and wishing the ' dratted mule ' 
was in Hades. 

"The worst of it was that his competitor, the Democratic candidate for Con- 
gress, a witty young Irishman, by the name of 'Jim Cavanaugh,' got to telling, in 
his speeches, that 'an ass was riding a mule through the country, and that one of 
them was running for Congress.'" 

But the party of campaigners won, all the same. They traveled 
by this private conveyance about two thousand miles, and made 
over sixty speeches each. They visited regions that had never 
heard a pohtical speech before. They spoke in barns, saw-mills, 
school-houses, halls, churches, and in the open air. They were for 
ten days in a frontier region so primitive that there w^as not a pair 
of stairs to be seen. 

Mpv. Donnelly's Part in the Campai&n. 

The State went Republican for the first time, the entire State 
ticket being elected: Ramsey, Governor; Donnelly, Lieutenant- 
Governor; Windom, Congressman, etc. Mr. Donnelly's speeches 
contributed a great deal to the conversion of the State. The 
Minneapolis State Atlas said, after the election: 

"Mr. Donnelly's nomination was thought by some, at the time it was made, 
to be a weak one, but the service he has rendered the cause, and the fact that he 
has run ahead of Governor Ramsey even, in many sections, must, we think, satisfy 
every Republican that his selection for that post was a most excellent and fortunate 
one." 

The Mankato Independent said : 

"In noticing the nomiaation of Mr. Donnelly, we spoke of him as ' the coming 
man of Minnesota.' Some of our friends thought this was too strong, but since his • 
speech here we believe the universal verdict is in favor of the truthfulness of Our; 
prediction." 

Many Democrats concede, to this date, t>hat it was Mr. Don- 
nelly's speeches which, more than anything else, turned the scale 
and made the State Republican. Of course we have no doubt that 



A S LIE U TENANT- G VEENOM. 33 

eventually Miunesota would have beeu Republican anyhow — the 
character of its settlers would have produced that result ; but there 
is no doubt that Mr. Donnelly's speeches hurried forward that event. 

His Career as Lieutenant-Governor. 

In 1850 the Legislature met, in the beginning of December, 
while tbe newly elected State otficers did not take their seats until 
the beginning of January, 1860. The Legislature was Republican 
by a large majority; in the Senate, however, the Democrats had a 
little more than one-third of the members. TheoutgoingLieutenaut- 
Governor, Mr. Holcombe, was a Democrat, and among the Demo 
cratic Senators were some of the best parliamentariaus and bright- 
est men in the State. These gentlemen, getting control, by accident, 
of the committee on rules, fixed things so that the minority could 
control the majority on all important questions ; and then provided 
that the rules could not be amended without a two-thirds vote, 
which the Republicans did not have; they thus rendered the large 
Repubhcan majority perfectly powerless. The Lieutenant- 
Governor sustained his party friends. Political feeling ran very 
high at the time; the Democrats were incensed at losing the State, 
while the Republicans were indignant at the trick which had been 
played upon them ; and they were especially fierce against Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Holcombe. 

Objects to the Precedent. 

In their rage the Republicans appointed a committee to confer 
with Governor Donnelly, and they told him that they had pretty 
much made up their minds to throw Governor Holcombe out of the 
second-story window of the Capitol, and they wanted to know what 
he (Mr. Donnelly) thought of the plan. He replied that, so far as 
Governor Holcombe was individually concerned, he would not object 
very much, but that he did not want to see such a xjrecedent estab- 
lished! It would only be a short time until the new State officers 
would be sworn in and Governor Holcombe would go out, and he 
thought it better to wait patiently for that event. They took his 
advice. There was a complete dead-lock until the end of the mouth. 
The Democrats did not see how Mr. Donnelly could get out of tl:o 
tangle they had cunningly involved the Republicans in ; but Mr. 
Donnelly, with his usual thoroughness, had studied parhameutary 
law in all its refinements. 

He Settled the Question. 

Friends and enemies were alike curious to see how this young 
and untried man would settle the difficulty. As soon as he had ' 
taken his seat the question arose, and thereupon Governor Donnelly 
pronounced a judgment so clear and lucid, and so thoroughly sus- 
tained at, every point by. authorities, that.he broke the dead-lock, 



34 BIOGEAPHICAL. 

and even the Democrats were forced to confess that he was right. 
After about a month's service, the State Neivs of St. Anthony and 
Minneapolis, of January 2.1st, 1860, expressed the general judgment 
when it said : 

"During the recent canvass, Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly was made the 
subject of especial depreciation bj his opponents. Taking advantage of the fact 
that he was comparatively a new man in the State, the opposition press denied to 
him ability, or any other qualifications for the responsible oflBce to which he was 
nominated. Even his supporters felt a hesitation, because he was so much of a 
stranger to them. The canvass gave proof of his ability in popular discussion. 
But he has done much more since his accession to the Presidency of the Senate to 
prove the propriety of the choice made by the nominating convention. He has won 
upon the good graces of all parties by the impartial courtesy with which he governs 
the deliberations of the Senate; and he has amply proved his ability to interpret 
and apply the laws of parliamentary proceedings. We have read 'the decision' by 
which he set aside the arbitrary action of his predecessor. It is a logical citation of 
principles and authorities, perfectly conclusive So convincing is it that even the 
political adherents of the late President are constrained to admit that he (Hol- 
combe) was mistaken in his course." 

The Election of Abraham Lincoln. 

Abraham Lincoln was Governor Donnelly's first choice for the 
Kepublican nomination for President ; and when he was nominated, 
he heartily supported his election, making a vigorous canvass and 
helping very much to again carry the State for the Republican 
ticket. Some report of one of his speeches was preserved by the 
St. Cloud Journal, and from it I make a few extracts to show his 
sagacity in foreseeing the course of events. The " Squatter Sov- 
ereignty Doctrine " of Stephen A. Douglas was, at that time, very 
popular in the West, but Mr. Donnelly showed up its errors in the 
following remarks, every word of which the good sense of mankind 
will approve to-day : 

" Squatter Sovereignty. " 

"Springing from this state of things — for platforms are but revelations of the 
conditions of the public mind and heart — is the doctrine of which Mr. Douglas is 
the great founder and exponent — the doctrine of ' Squatter Sovereignty.' 

"This doctrine has been for some years exposed to the scrutiny of the most 
intelligent people in the world, and has been fairly riddled and perforated with 
criticism and ridicule. Its inception, its startling novelty — 

" ' Got. wlien the soul did muddled notions try, 
And born a shapeless masS, like anarchy; ' 

its incongruities; its deceits; its impossibilities with itself; its shuffling and fraud- 
ulent history, have all been, time and again, laid beTore you, by your public 
speakers, In your newspapers, in your private conversations, until it has become 

" ' A thrice-told tale, 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.' 

I should weary your patience did I attempt to go over the well-worn path. 

'■There is, however, one aspect of this singular and novel doctrine, whicji has 
been but little touched upon,- but which, nevertheless, appears to me of the first 
consequence. I refer to the practical workings of the doctrine of ' Squatter Sov- 
ereignty' as applied to the Territories. It is my position here to-night that the 



'^SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY:' 35 

results of Squatter Sovereignty are anarchy, war, bloodshed in the Territorj-, and 
eventually civil war in the Nation itself. 

•'To that branch of the subject I shall devote my remarks this evening. 

"Mr. Breckenridge says, speaking of the American Congress, 'A stranger! 
visiting Washington, M'ould suppose the President of the United States to be the 
ruler of two distinct and hostile nations.' 

'' At this critical moment, when the nation is all tinder, waiting for the spark 
when the great work, proceeding peaceably, walks amid shadowy dangers Mr! 
Douglas comes forward with the announcement : ' 

'• ' True, my friends,' he says, in effect, ' wo cannot settle this question hero ; 
our oflScers cannot keep order; our parliamentary rules amouut to nothing ; we will 
come to blows and murder each other, which wouTcl be neither respectable nor 
pleasant. But there is a gi'cat empty region west of us. ^'ou Southerners, T)ick 
out your best fighting men, and you Northerners j-ours; send them forth and let 
them tight it out. For my part, 1 don't care which wins.' 

'• And so he washes his hands of the whole matter, like Pontius Pilate, when 
he handed over Christ to the executioners. 

•' And this, we are told, is a great policy ! This is great statesmanship ! This 
is ' Popular Sovereignty ! ' . . . 

" 'It removes this question,' says Mr. Douglas, 'from the halls of Congress.' 

"Is it. then, the great end of statesmansnip to remove great questions from 
the halls of Congress, to dodge issues, to change the venue of agitation ? 

"It was said in condemnation of William Pitt that he transferred the em- 
barrassments of his own age to the shoulders of a succeeding one. What shall be 
said of this man, Douglas, who preserves order in Washington by removing the dis- 
order to Kansas? Who heals the disease at its natural outlet, that it may break 
forth, with ten-fold virulence, in another part? And who is willing to chase the 
ulcer from the belly to the members and all around the system ? 

" But whither does he remove it? To the battle field! 

"The words of Alexander Hamilton become prophetic. There, between con 
tending hosts, amid the mixed population of a new countrv, stimulated by the fury 
of the on-gazing Nation, beneath the light of blazing dw'ellings. and accompanied 
by the rattle of rifles and the roar of artillery, the great problem of our age is solved, 
'dnd man is jvnved capahle of self-government! ... 

"But, my friends, this is more than a question of admiration for this or that 
man, or even of devotion to this or that principle. Air. Douglas' doctrine involves 
the perpetuity of our Government, the continuance of i)eace, and the personal wel- 
fare of all of us. 

"There are portentous consequences flowing from it; a dark terror stands in 
the background, which every man who sympathizes with Mr. Douglas should be 
prepared to confront. 

" Who will arrest this Territorial system ^vhen once established? 

" ' Like the yoiiug lion that has once hipped blood, 
The heart can never be coaxed back to aught else.' 

"Will Mr. Douglas contract to build a wall around this Territorial conflict ? 
Who shall say to this desperate iniquity, when it reaches the Territorial boundaries, 
'Thus farand no farther'? 

"Ko, my friends; you will see the inevitable evil rise into the air — gorgon- 
like—with all its horrors spread; looking abroad with blood-red eyes for wider 
fields 0f conquests. Where shall its pestilent feet first strike the earth ? 

^' Let Harper's Ferry answer! 

"Let the agitated Nation rise up and recognize in it — in this Squatter Sov- 
ereignty — the embodied genius of Civil War. ... 

"There is a mass of tinder in this countr}' which needs only such a fire-brand 
as this Squatter Sovereignt}- has proved itself to be. ' Warnings,' says Guizot. 'rays 
of light, are never withheld from rising revolutions.'" 

It is It Striking evidence of the foresight of Govei'nor Donnelly , 
that, thus early, he foresaw the coming of the civil war, for it will 



36 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

"be remembered that even so late as the spring of 1861 there were 
few who believed that war was possible. In fact, I understand that 
as far back as 1856 Mr. Donnelly prophesied that the country was 
on the brink of a great war, between the North and South, on the 
question of slavery, and he said it would depend on the capacity of 
the generals, on either side, whether it would be fought out north 
of Mason and Dixon's Hue or south of it. And he has since argued 
that if Beauregard had marched on Washington, after the dis- 
astrous rout of the natienal troops, at the first battle of BulPs Eun, 
the conflict would have been transferred to the soil of Pennsylvania 
and Ohio. 

The Civil Wae. 

In the spring of 1861 the great civil war began. This is not 
the proper place to refer, with any detail, to these great events. 

Governor Ramsey, of Minnesota, was in Washington when the 
news was first received of the firing on Fort Sumter. The Presi- 
dent issued his call for 75.000 volunteers, and Governor Ramsey had 
the honor to offer to the President the first thousand men. He 
telegraphed to St. Paul, to Lieutenant-Governor Donnelly, who was 
acting as Governor during his absence, to publish a call for one 
regiment, whereupon Governor Donnelly issued the following procla- 
mation : 

"Whereas, the Government of the Uuitod States, in the enforcement of the 
laws, has, for several months past, been resisted by armed organizations of citizens 
m several of the Southern States, who, precipitating the country into revolution, 
have seized upon and confiscated the property of the nation, to the amount of many 
millions of dollars ; have taken possession of its forts and arsenals; have fired upon 
its flag; and, at last, consummating their treason, hav under circumstances of 
peculiar indignity and humiliation, assaulted and capturea a Federal fort, occupied 
by Federal troops. Ana, whereas, all these outragCb, it is evident, are to be followed 
by an attempt to seize upon the National Capitol and the ofiices and archives of 
the Government. And whereas, the President of the United States, recurrmg in 
this extremity to the only resource left him, the patriotism of a people who, 
through three great wars, and all the changes of eighty-five years, have ever proved 
true to the cause of law, order and free institutions, has issued a requisition to the 
Governors of the several States for troops to support the Xational Government. 

"iS'"ow, therefore, in pursuance of law, and of the requisition of the President 
of the United States, I do hereby give notice that volunteers will be received at the 
city of St. Paul for one regiment of infantry, composed of ten companies, each of 
sixty-four privates, one captain, two lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals and 
one bugler. The volunteer companies already organized, upon complying with the 
foregoing requirements as to numbers and ofticers, will be entitled to be first 
received. The term of service will be three months, unless sooner discharged. 
Volunteers will report themselves to the Adjutant-General, at the Ca,>itol, St. Paul, 
by whom orders will be at once issued, giving all the necessary details as to enroll- 
ment and organization. . 

*' Given under my- hand and the great seal of the State, at St. Paul, this six- 
teenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight. hfindred and sixty- 
one. , 

" Ignatius Don-nellt. 

" Governor «(? /y?^i?/'u;^. 
"By the Governor. 

"J. H, Bakek, Secretary of State." 



SUJRBENDEnmG m A BODY. 37 

ORr^ANIZINd TRK FlIlST REGIMENT. 

The men came poming in with wonderful alacrity; the State 
Capitol was a busy place in those days. Governor Donnelly dis- 
played great executive ability ; he provided for the shelter and sup- 
port of the men, and oi'ganized the regiment, all except the appoint- 
ment of the officers. 'This Governor Ramsey reserved to himself, 
having a shrewd eye to the political influence of those appointments 
upon his own fortunes. 

The difficulty was, that more men were offered than could bo 
accepted, and there was a scramble to get into the regiment, which 
afterward achieved such great renown on many a bloody battle- 
field, and of whom but few ever returned to the State. 

It was Governor Donnelly's fortune to act as Governor during 
the organization of nearly all the regiments sent out by the State 
during the war, and he received high praise for the energy and exec- 
utive ability which he displayed in the work. He was strongly 
opposed to any person plundering the Government, and insisted that 
all supplies of clothing, or rations, should be'contracted for, after full 
notice in the newspapers, and should then be given to the lowest 
responsible bidder. 

The Uj^ifoems of the First Regiment. 

In a spicy correspondence which, some years afterward, oc- 
curred between Governor Donnelly and Hon. Gordon E. Cole, the 
Attorney- General of the State, and which created great amuse- 
ment at the time. Governor Donnelly thus refers facetiously to the 
contract for the equipment of the famous First Minnesota Regiment: 

Surrendering in a Body. 

" ' Bluff Aleck' [Governor Ramsey's nick- name] wrote me 
one day to come at once to the State Capitol, as he was about to go 
up the Minnesota Valley to the Indian payment, and would be gone 
for a few days. I felt like that celebrated member of the Irish Par- 
liament, Sir Boyle Roche, when he said, ' Mr. Speaker ! I smell a 
rat! I see him 'floating in the air! But by the blessing of God I 
will yet nip him in the bud ! ' 

" I came to St. Paul. One ' shoddy ' contract had already been 
consummated upon the First Regiment. The cloth of the pants fur- 
nished was of such fine quality, it was said, that when the regi- 
ment made a charge over a fence, there was such a display of white 
flags that the enemy thought the regiment had surrendered in a 
body. This naturally led to remonstrances, and some of the sol- 
diers were profane, my dear Cole. They thought it more important 
to protect their 'rear 'than to keep open their lines of communication. 

'' As soon as I reached St. Paul I discovered that a new con- 
tract was about to be made for some more of those valuable goods, 
and that it was to be done under my temporary administration! I 



38 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

felt confident, of course, tTiat ' liliiff Aleck ' would come out, in case 
any complaint was made, and assume the whole responsibility of the 
transaction ! So, to save him, ' I put my foot down,' as good Mr. 
Lincoln would say, and squelched the whole thing, and compelled 
the publication of an advertisement for bidders, and the awarding 
of the contract to the lowest bidder. " 

The events here referred to, in this jocose way, created a great 
deal of interest at the time. There was a determination on the part 
of certain parties, Avho were looking for large profits, to use Gov- 
ernor Donnelly as " a cat's-paw, to pull their chestnuts out of the 
fire. " An immense pressure was brought to bear on the Governor 
ad interim, but he resisted it well; as the following anecdote will 
show: 

Jacksoniai!^ Firmness. 

The Adjutant- General of the State insisted that the contract 
must be made at once without any previous advertising. To this 
Governor Donnelly strenuously objected. He refused to sign the 
contract. The following spicy dialogue then occurred : 

Adjutant- General — " Do you mean to say that you will not sign 
this contract ? " 

Governor Donnelly — " No; I will sign no contract where there 
is not a fair chance for all parties to bid ; and then the contract 
must go to the lowest responsible bidder. " 

Adjutant- General — "But Governor Ramsey is satisfied with 
this contract." 

Governor BonneUy — " Then let Governor Ramsey return home 
and sign it. " 

Adjutant- General — ^" If you will not sign it I will sign it myself, 
as Adjutant- General of the State." 

Governor Donnelly — " If you attempt anything of the kind I 
shall remove you from your ofQce so quick that it will make your 
head swim." 

And the Adjutant- General subsided. 

It is easy to see that this kind of a man — who could neither be 
bullied nor bought nor fooled — was not the kind of person that was 
wanted at the head of affairs, in a condition of things when 
plunder was the great object of the politicians and public life was 
full of moral rottenness. Every step Governor Donnelly took in 
defense of fair play and honesty accumulated more and more enemies 
against him, until at last they drove him out of public life. 

Fighting the Battle oe the Debtors. 
During Mr. Donnelly's term as Lieutenant-Governor he show jd 
the same disposition to work for the unfortunate that has been appar- 
ent in all his later career. There was at that time no limitation 
upon the price that could be charged for the use of money, and three 
per cent, per month, and five per cent, per month after maturity, as 



THE BEAU AND THE BEES. 39 

I have shown, were the usual rates. When the crisis came, while all 
property was flattened out, these rates continued to run, and they 
were bankrupting all the business men of the countiy. Governor 
Donnelly began a series of letters in the Minnesotiun, then the 
leading Republican paper, published by his friend Doctor Foster, 
which showed up the enormity of the system and led to a decision 
by the Supreme Court, which swept away the five per cent, per 
month after maturity extortion. As indicating the spirit in which 
Governor Donnelly looked upon these matters, I quote the following 
fable, from his pen, wliich appeared, at that time, in the Minnesotian: 

The Bear axd the Bees — A Fable Adapted to the Times. 

' ' Once upon a time a certain bear made his home in a small piece of ■woods. 
A swarm of bees, entering: the same, proceeded to build their hive in a hollow log. 
The bear visited them, and, after informing them that he was the owner of the 
woods thereabouts, claimed that if they remained they must pay him a certain 
amount of honey, in the nature of rent." To this the bees readily consented, pro- 
vided, however, 'that they were not to be called upon for the first "installment until 
the end of the autum months. 

"When the time appointed arrived the bear called for his rent. The bees 
infonned him that they had had a very stormy, unpropitious summer ; that their 
hive had been very imperfect, and open to the rain and the wind; that many of 
them had fallen sick and died, and that, on the whole, the utmost they had been 
able to accomplish was to build their wax-cells and support themselves. " That con- 
sequently they were unable to pay the rent as agreed upon ; but that they found 
the woods around them full of flowers, and, if not driven out, they felt confi- 
dent that they could, in the following summer, collect very large quantities of 
honey, pay the rent, and have a handsome surplus left. ' 

"The bear would not listen to this. He insisted that they agreed to pay a 
certain amount of honey; that the time had arrived and they must pay it. And 
forthwith he set to work upon the hollow log; and in a few moments the'fragments 
of wax-cells were strewn over the ground ; and the poor bees might be seen wing- 
ing their way to some more hospitable laud. 

"Bruin — his teeth clogged with wax — stood for some time looking after 
the retreating bees, and then fell into the following solemn meditations: 

" ' True, I have driven them forth ; 1 have broken up their hive ; I am revenged; 
but in what am 1 the gainer? I have neither honey in the present, nor the hope of 
honey in the future. 1 have destroyed that which in time would have brought me 
a settled income; and for it I have 'what? This torn log, these broken chips, this 
defaced mass of wax. Alas! in unhousing them I have injured myself! Logs and 
flowers are nothing without bees; and foolish indeed have I been to seek to en- 
force the payment of honey by driving out those who made the honey.' 

"Exit Bruin with a lugubrious countenance. 

"Moral: The honorable creditors of the people of this State can neither re- 
obtain their money, nor increase their security, by driving out the laborers of the 
State. The State is people — not land. And land* is no more money than flowers 
arc honey. Time and labor are necessary to produce either." 

It is worth remembering that a fierce fight was made by- 
interested parties to maintain the three and five per cent, a month 
system; and it was urged that to oppose it would drive capital out 
of the State and bring everything to destruction. This, by the way, 
is the same effigy at present erected in every grain-field of the 
West — powerless, except to frighten the weak and strengthen the 
usurers. 



40 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

A FoTJETH OF July Speech in Wak Times. 

On the fourth day of July, 1861, Lieutenant-Governor Don- 
nelly dehverecl an address at Northfield, Minnesota. As illustrating 
the way in which things were looked at by him, in those momentous 
times, now so rapidly receding into the dim past, I quote a few 
extracts : 

' ' Fellow CITIZE^^s : We are assembled, in the midst of revolution, to cele- 
brate the greatest of revolutions. For the first time in eighty years the anniver- 
sarv of our nation dawns in storm and darkness. We can no longer turn back, in 
exultation and pride, to contemplate the past ; our gaze must be fixed with trem- 
bling solicitude upon the immediate future. ... 

"And can we expect abatement in God's still greater work — the forward 
movement of his creature, man? Will He fall asleep and wake up with new plans? 
Will His schemes end like the Lost Kiver of Utah, in the sand— licked up by the 
overcoming heat of the flames of civil war "? 

"jSTo! The chords upon which the tempest now plays such discordant notes 
reach back into the bosom of primeval night. ' You will find the fibrous roots of 
this day's occurrences,' says Carlyle, 'among the dust of Cadmus and Trismegistus, 
with Father Adam himself, and the cinders of Eve's first fire.' 

' ' In this contest Marston Moor is one of our battle-fields ; Milton's Defensio 
Pojmli, one of our state papers; and every great efi'ort of the human understand- 
ing, in behalf of human rights, has contributed to our certain success. God is 
with us, and we need but be true to ourselves. . . . 

"Among nations we stand alone. If our experiment of free government sur- 
vives this great trial, no monarchy, no matter how popularized and palliated, can 
out-last fifty years. 

"Rival governments stand ready to snatch up our broken commerce and re- 
joice over our destruction. Already the sneer is on their lips. 

"They judge us by false parallels. This great people, in the full enjoy nient 
of liberty, accustomed to self-government, and with a gi-eat measure of education, 
can not be compared with either the people of England or France, bursting with vol- 
canic force through the forms of centuries, and struggling, blindly and madly, after 
a vague and ill-defined idea of liberty. . . . 

"It will go hard if a people whose invention, ingenuity and adaptability have 
illustrated every art and science, and widened the power and capacity of the human 
mind, shall be 'una!)le to survive the throes and convulsions of their simple and 
well-understood form of government. . . . 

"The chief merit of our form of government is that, like the tent in the fable 
of the Arabian, it can be made to cover a frontier settlement of a dozen families, 
or it can be spread, wide as the canopy of the sky, over all nations and all 
races. ... 

" Let the Republic feel the full weight of the burden that rests upon her. 
Let her awaken, in the language of Milton, ' rousing herself like a strong man 
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.' It is indeed but a poor courage 
which refuses to look danger in the face, or which ignores the difficulty by hiding 
it from sight. 

' ' Once thoroughly imderstanding it, we shall have the fortitude to meet and 
overcome it. . . . 

"The flag which waves over our heads to-day represents not alone a name or 
a war-cry, but all that advancing time has given of freedom to our race ; all that our 
race can hope of freedom from the future." 

Again Elected Lietjtenant-Goyeenor. 

In 1861 Governor Donnelly was again nominated, almost with- 
out opposition, for Lieutenant-Governor, and elected by an increased 
majority. 



THE DA WNING OPPOSITION. 41 

He is Elected to Congress. 

Mr. Donnelly's career as Lieutenant-Governor had given great 
satisfaction to those who had elected him, and even the Democratic 
members of the Senate were loud in his praise. The St. Anthony 
Neivs said : 

'• As a parliamentarian, we are safe in asserting that he stands without a rival 
in Minnesota. As an accomplished and highly successful presiding officer over a 
deliberative assembly, we know of no superior in any of our sister States, east or 
west. For three important sessions of the Legislature he has presided over the 
deliberations of our State Senate, and through his intimate acquaintance with par- 
liamentary usage and law, he has always greatly facilitated the public business. 
No appeal icas ever taken ami sustained from any of his numerous decisions. His polit- 
ical opponents, on the floor, always conceded to him the fii'st order of talent, and 
were ready, at the close of each session, to join in the warmest expressions of 
praise and approval." 

This was in the year 1862 — the darkest year of the war. 
There were but two Congressmen from Minnesota at that time (there 
are now seven); and there was a general feeling, throughout the 
district, in favor of the nomination of Governor Donnelly for Con- 
gress. It was felt that it was necessary for the district, which 
embraced the northern two -thirds of the State, and included the 
larger cities, to put forth its best and ablest man. The result was 
that when the Kepublican District Convention met, the sentiment 
was so much in favor of Governor Donnelly that his only competi- 
tor; Hon. James Smith, Jr., of St. Paul, withdrew; and he was 
nominated by acclamation, amid great enthusiasm. Governor Don- 
nelly acknowledged the honor in an acceptance speech from which we 
take an extract or two : 

" If, to-day, two parties are in the field, it is because of the existence among 
the people of two phases of sentiment in relation to this war : — one, a determination to 
sustain the government and preserve the unity of the nation at all hazards and at 
all cost; the other, a desire to regard any and all side-issues as paramount to the 
government and the Union. Tour organization to-day is rendered imperatively 
necessary by the existence of another organization, already in the field, whose an- 
nounced platform is simply a bill of grievances, and a catalogue of crimes, charged 
against the government in this, the extreme hour of its peril. Tou can not, as 
loyal men, permit the nation to fall under the control of those who would place it, 
bound hand and foot, at the mercy of its enemies. . . . 

" It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the relations of this struggle to 
the whole human family, here and in other lands ; to ourselves, and to our poster- 
ity, and to all the countless generations of men. Your own minds have already 
grasped this subject. Let us, then, rise to the emergency, as a chosen generation, 
upon whose shoulders have fallen the toils and honors Vf a great era. Let us so 
act that after ages will delight to revert to us, as one of tho shining examples of 
history. Let u"s make our mark on the face of the world, that the blessings of our 
work may live when we have all perished." 

The Dawning Opposition. 

It is true that even at this time Governor Donnelly's love for the 
■ Man as against the privileges of Power began to awaken hostility. 
An examination of the newspapers of the day distinctly foreshadows 



42 BIOGT^APHICAL. 

the fear, on the part of the incipient millionaires of the West, that 
this young giant would yet prove a thorn in their sides. Already 
the slowly-forming agencies of political destruction began to shape 
themselves, and a newspaper man can readily detect the hand of 
the schemer laying out the grave-digger's task, should Mr. Donnelly 
continue in his independent course. 

Joseph A. Wheelock. 

The man who was to attempt to assume, in later years, the im- 
portant task of grave-digger for Governor Donnelly — Joseph A. 
Wheelock, now the editor of the chief organ of Plutocracy in Minne- 
sota — at that time gave no sign of the prominence to which he has 
since attained as the tool of monopoly. He was then in the last 
extremity of poverty and sickness, and looked as if he would soon 
he himself a proper subject for the grave-digger. He had com- 
menced his career in Minnesota, away back in the fifties, as clerk to 
Frank Steele, the sutler at Fort Snelling, and it was his business to 
deal out whisky to the buck Indians, and calico to the squaws. He 
afterwards took a number of the red men and women and traveled 
through the East, giving exhibitions in the principal cities. Little 
did the mobs who paid their ten cents each to look at the show 
think that the cadaverous and badly-diseased youth, who was 
showing off the fine points of his red brethren and sisters, would, in 
the coming years, grow into a St. Paul aristocrat. But Mr. Wheel- 
ock's financial ability was not equal to the task he had undertaken, 
and at last, on Boston Common, the show broke up; Wheelock turned 
tail on his exhibition and fled in unmanly haste, leaving the painted 
warriors and wretched squaws to the tender mercies of the poor- 
house; while he himself worked his way back to Minnesota ^ — God 
only knows how — living during the whole trip, it is said, on a sin- 
gle loaf of bread. Governor Donnelly found him in St. Paul, in 
1860, in a garret of the old Fuller House, in a dirty room, full of 
empty bottles and inhaling-apparatus, wrestling with death and 
poverty. He saw that the man had ability, and his kind heart 
pitie^ him, and he worked hard, and made personal appeals to his 
friends, until he secured the passage of a bill creating the office of 
Commissioner of Statistics (an office which the bankrupt young 
State needed about as much as a cow needs an umbrella), with no 
salary, but with an appropriation of $100 for "stationery.'' It 
used to be jokingly said that Wheelock hved for a whole year " on 
postage stamps aiid mucilage," that is, he sponged on the State offi- 
cers for stationery and applied the $100 to keeping the spark of life in 
his unhealthy body. Governor Donnelly kept him alive to sting 
him continually for years afterward. It was the old story of the 
countryman who put the frozen snake in his bosom, to warm it, and 
lost his life as a reward for his generosity. If he had not, by his - 
personal influence, secured for him that $100 of " mucilage and 



THE INDIAN OUTBREAK AND ITS CAUSES. 13 

postage stamps," the fellow would undoubted!}' have perished. We 
will see, as we go on with this narrative, how ho repaid this gener- 
ous kindness of his friend, and how he blossomed out into wealth 
and power as the servile tool of corporations and rings. 

The Ixdian Outbreak axd its Causes. 

The Congressional Convention which nominated Governor Don- 
nelly met on the 30th day of July, 1862, and in the following month, 
on August 18th, came that terrible outbreak of the Sioux Indians, 
never to be forg-otten in the Northwest, in which one thousand inno- 
cent settlers, men, women and children, lost their lives, victims to the 
ruthless savages, fired to desperation by a long series of robbeiies, 
practiced upon them ever since the first treaty made between them 
and the United States Government. 

At that time, Governor Ramsey, then Territorial Governor, and 
Superintendent of Indian Aftairs, although he was treating with the 
Sioux as an independent nation, took a large number of their recog- 
nized chiefs and leaders prisoners, and, because they would not do 
what he desired, deprived them of their chieftainships and of their 
right to represent their peopie; and i)icked out dissolute and foolish 
young men, to whom he gave ponies and blankets, and clothed them 
with the powers of chiefs, and made a treaty with .them — his own 
tools and instruments. It was a bold and most unheard-of outrage. 
I. \'. L). Heard says, in his History/ of the Sioux War, page 35: 

■•The opposition of Red Iron, the principal chief of the Sissetons, became so 
boisterous that he was broken of his chieftainship by Governor Eamser, Superin- 
tendent of Indian Affairs, and one of the commissioners who made tiie treaties. 
'An eye-witness has sketched the appearance of the chief on that occasion, and the 
interview between him and the Governor, and -«hat afterward transpired. It took 
phice in December, 1852. The council was crowded with Indians and white men, 
when Red Iron was brought in, guarded hy soldiers.'^ 

Imagine the United States and England attempting to negotiate 
a treaty, and the English commissioners placing the American com 
missioners under arrest and marching them into the council chamber 
under a guard of English soldiers! We would, indeed, call it an 
outrage unheard-of before in the history of the civilized nations of 
the world. Mr. Heard continues : 

••He [Red Iron] was about forty years old, tall and athletic, about six feet 
in his moccasins, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin, compressed 
lips, and physiognomy beaming with intelligence and resolution. 

The following is an extract from the interview : 

'^Governor. — 'At the treaty I thought you a good man, but since, you have 
acted badly, and I am disposed to break you-^I do break you.' 

^^Sed Iron. — • Yoii hi-eak me / My people made me a chief. My people love 
me. I will still be their chief. I have done nothing wrong.' 

''Governor. — 'Red Iron, why did you get your braves together, and march 
around here for the purpose ofintimidating other chiefs, and to prevent their 
coming to the council?' 

''Slid Iron. — 'I did not get my braves together: they got together themselves 
to prevent hoi/s going to council to be made chiefs, to sign papers ; and to prevent 



44 BIOGRAPHTCAL. 

single cliiefi? from going to couueil at niglii to be bribed t(^ sign papers for money 
we have never got. We have heard how the Mdewakantons were served at 
Mendota— that by secret conncils you got their names on paper and took away 
their money.'" 

Vast sums of money, over $400,000, ^Yhicll, by the terms of the 
treaty, were to have been paid over to the Indians, were paid to the 
traders, a desperate and unscrupulous set of men, who trumped up 
bills against the Sioux, dating back for twenty years. All sorts 
of tricks were resorted to. In two cases very large amounts were 
paid to chiefs by placing the money on the tables before them, this 
constituting technically a payment ; but, at the same moment, the 
hand of some trader would reach in, from behind the chief, and 
grab the money before the Indian could lay his hands upon it. But 
at the same time the white witnesses were ready to swear that they 
saw the money paid to the chiefs. The sum of $55,000 was appro- 
priated by one Hugh Tyler, a stranger in the country, a Pennsyl- 
vanian, who took it under pretense that it was to cover outlays in 
getting the treaty through the United States Senate! The whole 
matter was subsequently investigated by the United States Senate, 
but, as usual, nothing was discovered, and everybody was white- 
washed. Nevertheles's a great deal 'of bad blood remained and 
rankled in the veins of the savages, until it broke out in the bloody 
sacrifice of 1862. 

At that time the Indians were called together to the annual pay- 
ment. The money was to have been paid in greenbacks, the same 
currency with which the Government paid its soldiers and all its other 
creditors. But there was a large premium on gold, and the cunning 
traders, who were sure, in the long run, to get most of the money, 
persuaded the Indians to refuse the greenbacks and demand gold. 
And so the greenbacks had to be shipped back and exchanged for 
gold ; and in the meantime the traders refused to' let the Indians 
have the goods. Says Mr. Heard, page 47: 

" Here they remained for some time, all pinched for food, and several dying 
of starvation. They dug up roots to appease their hunger, and when corn was 
turned out to them, like animals they devoured it uncooked." 

Little Crow, the Sioux leader, in a letter to General Sibley, 
written after the outbreak (Sept. 7th), thus alluded to this matter: 

"For what reason we have commenced this war I will tell you. It is on ac- 
count of Major Galbraith " [the U. S. Indian Agent]. "We made a treaty with the 
Government a beg for what little we do get, and then can't get it till our children 
are dying with hunger. It was with the traders that commence. Mr. A. J. My- 
rick told" the Indians that they would eat grass or their own dung."* 

The wrongs inflicted upon the Indians by rascally ofi&cials and 
traders have never been half told; and, unfortunately, the same 
men who robbed the red men, as we shall see hereafter, controlled 
the politics of the new State. In fact, these extortions could not be 
carried on without friends at Washington; and both ^political 

*The above is the Ena;lish of a half-breed amanuensis. — E. W. F. 



THE MAJOR'S STRATEGY, 45 

parties tiierelbre fell under the control of what was known as " the 
moccasin element, " that is, politicians wearing moccasins, many of 
them " squaw-men. " A great part of Mr. Donnelly's political 
career consisted of a continuous battle with these influences, which 
finally overthrew him. He did not belong to the older generation 
of Indian traders: he represented a newer civihzation. 

GoYEENOPv Donnelly's Military Experience. 

When the outbreak came, August 18, 1862, Governor Ramsey 
called for volunteers to put it down; and a force, of about 1,500 
men, was soon collected at St. Peter, and placed under the com- 
mand of Gen. Henry H. Sibley, formerly Delegate in Congress from 
the Territory, and first Governor of the new State. Governor Don- 
nelly joined General Sibley at St. Peter, and accompanied the little 
army to the relief of Fort Ridgley, on August 26th. It was sur- 
rounded by thousands of the hostile savages. A night attack was 
made on the fort after the troops had gained possession of it; and 
on September 2d a detachment encamped at Birch Cooley, under 
the command of Maj. Jos. R. Brown, which had been sent out to 
bury the dead settlers, was surrounded, and a large part of the 
force killed and wounded. 

Governor Donnelly wrote a very interesting account of that 
part of the Indian war which he witnessed, with many graphic 
descriptions of the bloody and terrible pictures presented by the 
ruined homes and slaughtered people. It was afterward published 
by the Interior Department as an official document. If space per- 
mitted, I would hke to quote from it. It was during all these excit- 
ing events that Mr. Donnelly's first election to Congress took 
place. 

Major Cullen. 

Governor Donnelly's Democratic competitor for Congress was 
Maj. W. J. Cullen, formerly United States Indian Agent, and a 
very shrewd, witty, good-natured Irishman. An amusing story is 
told of his rex)ly to an acquaintance who one day asked him : 

'' How does it happen, Major, that while your salary as Indian 
Agent is only $2,500 a year, and you have held the office but for 
four yearS; and you came here poor, yet you are worth to-dav : 
$100,000 ? How did you save so much out of so little? " 

'' I'll tell you, my friend," said the Colonel confidentially, with 
a wink and a chuckle, " if you'll say nothing about it. We didn't 
keep any hired girl ! " 

The Major's Strategy. 

The Colonel was a great wag. When his competitor for Con- 
gress reached St. Peter, the little town was overrun with troops and 
it was vcvy. difficult to. find a place to sleep; and the Colonel gallantly 
invited Governor Donnelly to share his rude couch on the floor. 



46 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

The invitation was gladly accepted, but when the Republican can- 
didate for Congress rose the next morning, he found not only that 
his Democratic opponent, had disappeared, but that his weapons of 
war were gone with him ! 

The troops were ro move out to the attack of the Indians that 
day, and the Major thought that Governor Donnelly would not dare 
to go out, on such an expedition, unarmed; and that if he showed 
the white feather, he would be disgraced. But the Major didn't 
understand the nature of his opponent. After making fruitless 
efforts, in St. Peter, to purchase a rifle, or some other weapon, 
Governor Donnelly moved out with the troops — in fact, at the head of 
them — unarmed. He and Colonel Merriam, father of the present 
Governor of Minnesota, a man of reckless courage, kept a mile or 
two in advance of the troops, all the way to Fort Ridgely, despite 
the aids -de- camp sent out by General Sibley to warn them of their 
danger and call them back; for, as the attack shortly afterward 
made at Birch Cooley showed, the country was swarming with liostile 
savages. When the story got out that Major CuUen had spirited 
away his competitor's weapons, and that the Republican candidate 
for Congress had actually ridden, unarmed, in advance of the troops, 
to the relief of the 3,000 settlers, men, women and children, shut up 
in Fort Ridgely, the tables were completely turned on the Major, 
and Governor Donnelly's vote was correspondingly increased. 

He is Elected to Congress. 

In the election Governor Donnelly had above 1,200 majority. 
He took his seat in the House in December, 1863, as a member of 
the Thirty-eighth C(mgress. General Garfield of Ohio, afterwards 
President of the United States, and himself drew seats at the same 
double desk. They were the two youngest members of the House, 
General Garfield being a few days Mr. Donnelly's junior. They 
became intimate friends and so continued ever after, as long as 
General Garfield lived. 

Mr.. Donnelly devoted himself zealously to the interests of his 
constituents. There was a great deal to do. The country was all new. 
New post-offices had to be established ; new mail routes organized ; 
new land offices created, and at the same time there was a vast 
amount of business growing out of the war and out of the Indian 
troubles. 

A member of Congress from Wisconsin, a Mr. Cobb, who repre- 
sented a district largely settled by lead-miners, sat near Governor 
Donnelly in the House, and one day he remarked to him : 

" Governor, how comes it you get such piles of letters every 
day? I do not receive more than one or two letters in a week. " 

" Why," replied Mr. Donnelly, " my constituents are all on top 
of the earth, not in it." 



STOPPING A SWINDLE. 4/ 

STOPPiifG A Swindle. 

We now come to an act of Governor Donnelly which had, per- 
haps, more to do with shaping his whole future career than any 
other one thing. 

On the 2d of May, 1864, Governor Donnelly sent to Hon. 
Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means 
of the House of liepresentatives, a letter of which the following is 
a copy: 

'^Hon, Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman Committee of Ways and Means, H. JR., Wash- 

ington, D. C, 

'*SiR: On the 27th iilt. there was referred to the Committee of Wars and 
Means a letter from the Secretar}^ of the Interior, transmitting estimates of amounts 
required to cany out the stipulations of the Chippewa treaty of March, 1863. 

"Although the Indians referred to live altogether in the Congressional district 
which I have the honor to represent in the House, and although the appropriations 
asked for are verj large, 1 have never been notified that such steps were being 
taken, or such appropriations asked for, and it was only by accident that my atten- 
tion was called to the same. , 

"1 feel that I would be false to the plainest dictates of duty if I did uot, re- 
gardless of the consequences to myself, interpose an eai-nest protest against the 
appropriatious asked foi-. It is proposed at this time, when the nation is struggling 
for its very life, and Avhen every dollar of needless expenditure should be carefully 
avoided, to pay $157,930 for wliat your committee have already estimated woulcl 
be worth $7,600, being a difference of $150,330.* 

"Some of these items are overcharges of the gi'ossest kind. Take the first: 
" ' For breaking, clearing and grubbing three hundred acres of land, for 

Mississippi Indians, per fourth article, treaty of 1863, $50 per acre . . . . $15,000 

" Why grubbing ? Is it pretended that three hundred acres of 7»-a«'m land 
can not be found in that region, but that land must be cleared and grubbed? 

"The price asked is $50.00 per acre for ' breaking, clearing and grubbing.' In 
the most densely settled parts of Minnesota the most valuable farm lands can be 
bought — broken, fenced, and with buildings on them — for $25.00 per acre — one- 
half what is here asked should be given for breaking, clearing and grubbing alone. 

"There can be no ditficulty iu finding abundance of prairie land, and it can 
be ' broken' for three dollars per acre, making, for the three hundred acres, $900, a 
difference of $14,100. 

"The next item which I particularly notice is this : 
' ' ' For railroad from Gull Lake to Leach Lake $15,000 

"I am at a loss to understand this, and suppose it to be a misprint. Surely 
the Government is not about to build a railroad for those Indians! If it means 
the construction of a wagon road the amount seems to me to be enormous, and I 
think it will be so considered by any frontier people, t 

' ' The next item is as follows : 
" ' For removing agency to new location $25,000 

" What can this refer to ? If it means the bodily removal of the buildings of 
the present agency to the new agency, it is an unnece'ssary absurdity. If it means 
the removal of the agent and his family, books, chairs' and tables, it is a gross 
fraud. If it means the construction of new buildings, at the new agency, it is an 
enormous overcharge. The sum of $25,000 would rather build a palace than an 
agency. 

*The treaty itself fixed the amount to be spent, in carrying out its provisions, 
at that figure— $7,600.— E. W. F. 

tAt this time there were not one hundred miles of railroad in the whole Stale 
of Minnesota.— E. W. F. 



48 BIOGBAFHIGAL. 

"The next item is as follows: 
" ' Transportation and subsistence to their new homes, 2,000 Indians, at 

$10 per head $20,000 

"How do Indians travel? With their ponies carrying their tents and luggage, 
the women on foot, canying their infants on their backs, and the men and half- 
grown children on foot. In this way they will make journeys of hundreds of miles. 
The average distance to which they are to be removed is, I am informed, but about 
one hundred and fifty miles. Is it proposed to furnish stages and ambulances for 
them? Certainly not. They will make the journey in the same manner in which 
they have traveled from time immemorial, and the United States, out of a depleted 
treasury, is asked to pay $20,000 to the men who superintend this movement. 

" The next and last item is as follows : 
" ' Subsistence for 2,000 Indians for six months, at fifteen cents per head, 

each day $54,000 

"It is hard to analyze this item, as it is impossible to say what kind or amount 
of food will be furnished them, but the sum charged is very large, and I have no 
doubt the same number of Indians, part of them being children, could be supported 
for six months for one-half that sum. 

"I would therefore ask that every item of this account should be duly 
scanned, and not one dollar appropriated that is not just and right. Such claims, 
while they take from the treasury that which is not due, benefit neither the State 
nor the Indians. 

' ' I have the honor to be very truly and respectfully yours, 

"Ignatius Doif nelly." 

This letter ended that " steal." The Secretary of the Interior 
wrote a letter to Governor Donnelly, thanking him for the exposure 
of a great fraud. The knaves were overwhelmed. Their advance 
on the United States Treasury had been blocked. Many of the 
leading newspapers of the State expressed their thanks to the bold 
Congressman for his course. 

The leading Eepublican paper of Faribault said : 

"We tender Mr. Donnelly our sincere thanks for this, we hope, timely ex- 
posure of a most audacious, barefaced attempt to swindle the Government, in the 
name of the Indians, for the benefit of a few individual ofiice-holders in the Indian 
Department, and we deeply regret that the balance of the Minnesota delegation 
have not been equally prompt in rebuking the avarice and fraudulent purposes of 
the getters-up of this swindle. 

" "There is not a representative from this State, in the Senate or the House, 
who does not know that the best agiicultural lands in the best settled and best cul- 
tivated portions of the State, with good buildings and improvements, can be 
bought for one-half the money asked for to break and grub some lands for these 
Indians, where no grubbing is necessary. No man, better than Alexander Eamsey, 
knows that there are thousands of acres of prairie in the country assigned to these 
Chippewa bands, and to which, by the treaty he made with them, they are to be 
removed, that can be broken, as Mr. Donnelly says, for $3.00 per acre. 

" It is no pleasant task to expose the rascality of men who will thus strive to 
plunder the country. It is no credit to the State that beings in the human form 
can be found in it, and are elevated to very prominent ofiicial situations, claiming 
to be citizens of the United States, loyal men and warm friends of the administra- 
tion, who are so lost to the noble sentiments of patriotism and manhood, so re- 
gardless of their reputation and the good opinion of decent men, that they will, m 
such a crisis in the country's history as the present, deliberately plan and apply to 
Congress for aid to carry out %o audacious and bold a piece of villainy as that pro- 
posed in xeierence to this .swindling Chippewa treaty. But justice, patriotism, ana. 



THE WAB OPENED ON GOVERNOR DONNELLY. 49 

common decency imperatively require that all such schemes and schemers should 
be exposed, and Mr. Donnelly's prompt exposure should be commended by every 
true friend of the country." 

The War is Opened on Governor Donnelly. 

This was the keynote to ^Ir. Donnelly's career, and the buj^le 
call to his enemies. From this moment Mr. D(mnelly was a doomed 
man. No power, no genius, no manhood could rise above the 
secret engineering of the dominant i)oliticians, until the trumpet 
sounded for the dawn of a new and tremendous revolution in the 
political history of the world. 

The St. Paul Press, the leading Republican paper of the State, ' 
substantially the same as the present Pioneer-Press, which is owned 
by the same men, Joseph A. Wheelock and F. Driscoll, rushed to the ■ 
defense of the Indian Ring, and took up the cudgels in behalf of the ; 
proposed appropriations. The nature of its attacks will be shown ' 
by the replies made to it by other newspapers. 

I make one or two extracts, from the State papers, to show the 
spirit of the contest. 

The St. Paul Pioneer, the leading Democratic paper of the 
State, said, Jane 15th, 1864: 

"Mr. Donnelly has been guilty of a species of treason which makes him worse 
than a copperhead — in the estimation of the Press. "What the effect will be on the 
personal fortunes of Mr. Donnelly, or of the Indianocracy, we knowlittle and care 
less." 

The Daily Bepublican, of Winona, of July 8th, 1864, said : 

"For the purpose of making capital against Mr. Donnelly, the St. Paul Presa. 
which is the organ of the clique of Indian agents and others, whose instincts for 
plunder are well-developed, took occasion to denounce that gentleman, in an un- 
warrantably severe manner, on account of his protest against the proposition to 
swindle the Government by expending $150,000 in the removal of theChippewas to 
their new reservation. It was discovered, however, that this method of making 
war would uot prove successful, and, after learning that Mr. Donnelly's protest had 
caused the withdrawal of the estimates, and called from the Secretary of the In- 
terior a letter of thanks to Mr. Donnelly, for the services he had rendered the 
country, the Government and the Department, the open attacks upon him ceased, 
and now the warfare is being conducted in the manner familiarly known among 
the Indian agents and their dependents as the 'still hunt.'" 

The Hastings Independent said : 

"We can not see on what the Press predicates its ability to injure Mr. Donnelly, 
but we believe it will be futile, before a pure and honorable constituency. lu mauy 
of the sparsely-settled counties of the State these contractors have their agents 
and employes; these men are the men who will control the primary meetings and 
be elected as delegates to the State Convention, and these the Press hopes to use tc 
defeat the nomination of Mr. Donnelly, Thus it will be seen that the Press looks 
to the corruptionists to carry out its schemes," 

To the attacks of the St. Paul Press Governor Donnelly re- 
phed, In a letter dated Washington, May 30, 1864, as follows : 

^'■Editors Press: .... I was aware that the man who exposes fraud and cor- 
ruption must be prepared for the resistance and maligant opposition of those he 



50 BlOGEArillCAL. 

thwarts of thoir expected prey, and 1 therefore desired to lay all the facts, in this 
case, plainly before the people. Neither was my action precipitate. My sense ot 
duty compelled me to resist the consummation of so great a fraud, but, ai the same 
time, I deliberately weighed all the consequences to myself and accepted them. 

" I have saved the people of the United States the expenditure of $153,000. 
I am satisfied I have done my duty. The Secretary of the Interior, upon the 
receipt of a copy of that letter, withdrew his communication to the Committee of 
Ways and Means, and personally thanked me for the services I nad rendered tlm 
department 

"Surely no sensible man would believe that to transport 2,000 men, women 
and chilurcn, 150 miles, in canoes and on foot, would cost the Government $20,000, 
when, by your own showing, it is impossible to transport them on wagons, and 
they have to move themselves. It is a little too much of a good thing to require 
an Indian to walk and paddle 150 miles, through the wilderness, and then charge the 
Government $10 for carrying him ! . . . 

■'Nor can I see the propriety of expending $15,000 in con^tructing a wagon 
road, in the midst of an impassable wilderness of swamps, for the accommodation 
of those who travel in canoes ! . . . 

" You ask me to persevere in uprooting this matter. I shall do so. I have 
faith to believe that the people will strengthen the hands of the man who seeks to 
serve them. If God spares my life, I shall rip open this whole Indian system, and 
let the light of day into its dark places. The evils can be remedied. It can not bo 
to the interest of the white man to perpetually degrade and brutalize and impover- 
ish this Avretched race, dependent upon him. It Avould be more merciful to let 
loose, fire and sword at once and sweep him from existence. It is not the fault of 
the American people, for they are Christianized and humane; it is not the fault of 
the Government, for it annually wastes its millions upon the Indians; but it is the 
fruit of the system, which leaves an ignorant, savage and helpless race at the mercy 
of a few able, unscrupulous and irresponsible men." 

Reelected to Congress. 

The battle raged fast and furious to prevent Governor Don- 
nelly's reelection to Congress. He was a hindrance and an oflense. 
He must be defeated. He must be got out of the way. Joe. 
Wheelock, in the St. Paul Press, _ led the fight, but many of the coun- 
try papers stood by Governor Donnelly nobly. Their articles make 
interesting reading. They show that the Indian King was at the 
bottom of the opposition. 

But when the district convention assembled in 1884, Governor 
Donnelly was renominated by acclamation, the following resolution 
being adopted by a unanimous vote : 

" Mesohed, That we have watched with admiration the bold, manly and patri- 
otic course of Hon. Ignatius Donnelly in Congress ; that we recognize in him a 
faithful public servant, ever alive to the true interests of his constituents and of the 
nation ; and that we now renominate him by acclamation for the position he so 
worthily fills." 

In his speech of acceptance. Governor Donnelly alluded, in a 
courteous spirit, to the opposition that had been made to him, as 
follows : 

" I trust, however (and I say this in the kindest spirit), that the remarkable 
unanimity of your action will be accepted everywhere as an indication that the 
people are resolved that the strictest economy and honesty shall prevail in the 
administration of every department of the Government. ("Great applause.] 



CONGBESSIONAL CAREER. 51 

" It is, indeed, a great point gained when a community makes it manifest, as 
vou have done, that the path of political safety lies on the side of official honesty. 
1 irust the verdict you have this day rendered will stand unimpeached for a genera- 
tion, for surely no subject can touch your own welfare more nearly. Without 
honesty among othcials and vigilant watchfulness among the people, popular insti- 
tutions must inevitably sink in a sea of corruption and profligacy, and the fairest 
hopes of mankind be destroyed."' 

Ill the course of his reaiarks, alluding to the war then raging, 
he said : 

•• Let us rise, then, to the highest plar.e possible. Let us remember that the 
question at issue is not the safety of our party, but of our country: and that if we 
would be able to exercise our party preferences in the future, we must save the 
nation in the present. . . . 

••On the battle-field, under our flag, men stand shoulder to shoulder, who 
represent every shade of loyal political ijcntiment. Does not their blood, com- 
mingling its crimson currents, send up a voice of reproach from the ground, against 
political intolerance among the people for whom it is shed? Shall we. who may 
difler as to detail, not stand shoulder to shoulder in this army-behiud-the-army. in 
tiiis reserve force of national sentiment, and so do as unanimous a work in the' war 
of opinions as they are doing in the strife of the battle-field? [Hear, hear.] 

••Politics are principles. Over the lesser details, the eiFervescences. the 
excrescences of the surface, men diifer. The great undercurrents of humanity and 
(iod-head are the centrifugal and centripetal pri nciples of natui'e, and upon them 
rest all politics. 

"Truth is not a violence. It does not take its votary by the throat. It never 
got into any man in that way. It is a figure, standing upon the pedestal of the 
M'orld — a les^^er (xod — the shadow of the one creative God. Men walk past and 
look up to it. To one, it seems cold ana lifeless, and shrouded in leaden mists. 
To another, it stands with the glory of the world upon its brow, the gentleness of 
heaven in its eyes, its hnnd pointing the undoul)ted way to life. 

••Truth will live though we all die. Galileo muttered, as he signed his 
recantation of the doctrine of the earth's motion. 'But it does move.' Pen and ink, 
prison and chains, bread and water could not stop it; the monks had no lever that 
could pry it from its orbit; it kept on moving until all Christendom was ready to 
speak aloud the muttered words of Galileo. • But it does move.'" 

Speaking of the American flag coming triumphantly out of the 
civil war, he said : 

•'To our children and our children's children, it will represent all this, and 
more, much more ; it will represent a great schism and rebellion overcome and 
subdued; it will represent a larger period of history and a wider experience of man : 
its clustering constellation will be crowned with a hundred stars, and its bright and 
bL'autiful lines will glitter the protecting genius of regions and races which now 
know them not — everywhere preaching'of peace and freedom, evei-j^where testi- 
fying to love for man and faith in God." 

I think it will be conceded that this was ceitainly an extraordi- 
nary kind of speech for a triumphant politician to make, just re- 
nominated to Congress, and in the midst of the passions of the most 
leri'iblc civil war of modern times. 

CONGKESSIOXAL CAEEEH — IMMIGRATION. 

In the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, Governor 
Donnelly made several important speeches. On Feb. 27, 1SG4, he 
delivei ed an address on immigration, taking for his text the recom- 
mendation of President Lincoln in his annual message. It was a 



52 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

period when immigration was extremely desirable. He showed how 
largely foreign immigration had contributed to the growth of our 
population and wealth. He showed that ^' the immigrants arriving 
in the United States, since the foundation of the government, were 
1,259,449 more than the total population with which we commenced 
our career as a nation. " He said : 

" This, then, Mr. Chairman, is the explanation of the almost fabulous rate of 
growth which we have enjoyed. This is the source of the incalculable resources 
Ave have been enabled to pour forth in the face as an astonished world. This is the 
womb from which have gone forth those countless hordes of armed men, beneath 
whose tread the earth seems to tremble."' 

He introduced a bill for the establishment of a Bureau of Immi- 
gration, the chief purpose of which was to protect the immigrants 
from fraud and robbery. 

He concluded his speech with these words : 

' ' With nearlj one billion acres of unsettled lands on one side of the Atlantic, 
and with many millions of poor and oppressed people on the other, let us organize 
the exodus which needs must come, and build, if necessary, a bridge of gold across 
the chasm which divides them, that the chosen races of mankind may occupy the 
chosen lands of the world." 

During the twenty- seven years which have elapsed since that 
speech was delivered, the vast immigration which he foresaw would, 
after the war, flood our shores, has been realized, and we have now 
reached a new era when the question arises whether we should not 
put some restraints upon the great migration, at least so far as to 
separate the good from the bad, and divide the chaff from the wheat. 

The Civil Wae. 

On the 2d of May, 1864, Governor Donnelly dehvered a speech 
upon the pending war and the reconstruction of the South. It 
takes the ground that slavery must perish, that the safety of the 
nation and the welfare of the whole people. North and South, requires 
it. He concludes with the following thoughts on Truth: 

"And who will dare to say that in the long fight of the centuries error is not 
hourly losing blood and strength and life ; that truth is not each day arming itself 
with new and more formidable weapons, shining each day with more glorious and 
more effulgent radiance. 

''Let us take to ourselves the consolation aiforded by this thought — that 
truth is imperishable, and that no human power is suflacient to destroy it. It is a 
subtle essence — the soul of the material world. The heavens and the earth may 
pass away, but truth shall not pass away. We have seen it in all the past liberated 
by the blows aimed at its destruction. We have seen it passing, upon golden 
wings, out through all the meshes with which the preverted skill of the human 
mind sought to entangle it. 

" Let us remember, then, that, in so far as we contribute, however humbly, to 
the cause of truth, we are identifying our temporary existence with an eternal work. 
This is a posterity which shall never die ; this shall live and brighten and keep 
green our memories when the descendants of our bodies have disappeared from 
among the things of the world. 

' ' For myself, I can see the welfare of my country only in those things which 
widen the opportunities and elevate the dignity of mankind. I cannot perceive the 
advantage to any man of the degradation of any other man, and 1 feel assured of 



THE CIVIL WAR. 5:? 

the greatness aud perpetuity of my (rountr}' ouly in so l;ir as it ideutilies itaelf with 
the uninterrupted progress 'and the universal liljerty of mankind."' 

This was a remarkable speech to liavc been delivered i;i the 
midst of a fierce civil war. There was no iuvective in it and no 
denunciation of the South. It discussed the issues of the war from 
a high aud generous platform. 

The Thirty-ninth Congress.— The State of Lincoln. 

On December 13, 1865, Mr. Donnelly introduced a resolution, 
which was adopted, directing the Committee on Territories to in- 
quire into the propriety of affixing the name of Lincoln to some 
one of the Territories of the West. It is a pity this suggestion has 
not been carried out. 

Universal Education. 
On December 14, 1865, Governor Donnelly introduced the fol- 
lowing resolution: 

'•Whereas, Kepublican institutions can find permanent safety only upon 
the basis of the universal intelligence of the people ; and whereas the great disas- 
ters which have afflicted the nation and desolated one-half of its territory are 
traceable, in a great degree, to the absence of common schools ancl general educa- 
tion among the people of the lately rebellious States; therefore, 

''Besolved, That the Joint Committee on Reconstruction be instructed to in- 
quire into the expediency of establishing, in this Capitol, a National Bureau of Edu- 
cation, whose duty it shall be to enforce ecUication, without regard to race or color, 
upon the population of all su-^h States as shall fall below a standard to be estab- 
lished by Congress, and to inquire whether such a bureau shall not be made an 
essential and permanent part of any system of reconstruction." 

There was quite a battle over this resolution. Mr. Philip John- 
son, a member of the House from Pennsylvania, moved to lay it on 
the table. Tellers were appointed, and the motion to lay on the 
table was defeated, by a vote of 37 ayes and 113 nays; and the reso- 
lution was then adopted. 

It is to Governor Donnelly's honor that, while many of his pohtical 
associates were clamoring for vengeance on the prostrate South, he 
was simply anxious to give the whole coimtry universal education. 

This was the first suggestion of a Bureau of Education, as part 
of the General Government, ever made in Congress, and after a long, 
fierce battle Mr. Donnelly, aided by General Garfield, secured its 
establishment, and it stands to this day a monument of his foresight 
and patriotism. His speech on the subject of education was the 
marked feature of the Thirty-ninth Congress. 

Opening up a New Empire. 

On January 26, 1866, Mr. Donnelly introduced a resolution 
which was adopted and was the forerunner of the Northern Pacific 
Kailroad, and of the settlement of the great region of country now 
occupied by the States of North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, etc. It 
was as follows : 

" "Wheeeas, the development of the gold-producing regions of the country is of 



M mOGBAPHICAL. 

the iitnLOst importance to the financial success of the nation ; and whereas, commu- 
nication bot\veen the northern tier of States and the gold fields of Idaho and Mon- 
tana is BOW possible only hy a long detour to the southward, as far as St. Louis ; 
therefore, 

'■'■Resolved, That the Committee on Military Affairs be directed to inquire into 
the expediency of directing the Secretary of War, by bill or otherwise, to establish 
a line of military posts, from the western boundary of Minnesota to the Territories 
of Montana and Idaho, by the most direct and advantageous route ; and to facilitate 
communication along said route by the construction of a military road, with proper 
bridges over the water-courses." 

This line efforts and military bridges was soon flfter established, 
and the result was the opening up and settleroent of a region of 
country ten times as large as all New England. 

Tkue Statesmanship. 

Governor Donnelly's far-sightedness and liberality of spirit was, 
however, most plainly shown in his speech delivered Feb. 1st, 1866. 
He had offered an amendment requiring the Commissioner of the 
Freedman's Bureau to provide a common school education to all 
refugees and freedmen who should apply therefor. In the course of 
his remarks, he said : 

"It is a subject of congratulation that we have passed beyond those old and 
bitter days when revenge and intolerance were the guiding principles of govern- 
ments. As victors in the mighty struggle which has but lately terminated, and as 
-we claim tj be the superiors of the South in enlightenment and Christianity, we 
can afibrd to be magnanimous to thfe highest degree compatible with public 
safety. That alone should be the limit of our generosity, and beyond that we 
should not go a hair's breadth. 

'•We must cultivate an enlarged national spirit. We are, and must always be, 
one people. We cannot advance the nation hij despoiling any j^ar^ of it. We cannot 
strengthen liberty here by inaugurating oppression elsewhere. We must hasten 
that day when we will be, in mutual regard, as we are in name, one people. . . . 

"The spirit of humanity cannot be illiberal. Reform cannot work injustice. 
'The right wrongs no man.' In all this we shall bless and benefit the South and 
lift her up to a higher plane of prosperity and greatness. It will be a work of 
mercy. To do otherwise would be to leave her a prey to the misgove-rnment which 
has already blasted her fair fields and filled her habitations with mourning. " 

Universal Education. 

Again, in the same speech, Governor Donnelly spoke out in be- 
half of popular enlightenment. He said : 

" The best laws will not save an unworthy people from ruin, as is seen in the 
case of the South American republics. The worst form of government will not pre- 
vent a clear-headed race from struggling up to prosperity, as is seen in the history 
of England. You may have as many constitutions and as perfect as the fertile 
Sieyes kept in the pigeon-holes of his desk, but they will prove of no avail if the 
people are not fit to receive them. Grentlemen demand that the ballot shall be 
universal. They must go further ; they must insist that capacity to properly direct 
the ballot shall be likewise universal. 

"Let us inquire, what is education ? 

"It is a means to an end— the intelligent action of the human faculties. He 
who is opposed to education is opposed to the enlightenment of the people, and 
must necessarily be their enemy, since he seeks to obtain for himself some advan- 
tage out of their ignorance, and strives to obscure their judgment that he may the 
better mislead them. 



UNIVEBSA h m) VCA TJON. '^ 

"ItisTiot.nccossarvlodciiioiistralcIlK iiiiix.rliUK'o of odncatiou. Tho ronimon 
rtciispoC mankind apprun>s it ; the siu-rcss «,t(.;!r nation attests it; !i million hiippy 
homes in onr midst proclaim it. Education Jias hiMo fused all nations into one ; it 
has obliterated prejudices; it has dissolved falsehoods; it has auuouuced groat 
truths- it has tlum;- open all doors; and, thank God, it has at last broken all the 
shackles in the land ! The rebellion sprang- from popular ignorance ; its suppression 
came from popular education. When the Englishman described tho North as a 
laud ' where every man had a newspaper in his pocket," ho touched at once tho vital 
point of our greatness and tho true secret of our success. 

" Let the great work go on. Its tasks arc but half completed. Lot it go on 
until i"-noranee is driven beyond our remotest borders. This is the noblest of all 
humai'labors. This will bu'ild deep and wide and imperishable tho foundations of 
our (Jovernmeut; this will raise up a structure that shall withstand the slow 
canker of tim(> and the open assaults of violence. The freedom of the people resting 
ui)on tho intelligence of the people ! Who shall destroy a nation founded upon this 
rock?" 

Governor Donnelly proceeded to give some striking statistics, 
showing the vast number of illiterate persons in the United States, 
according to the census of 1860. 

This speech created a great sensation and fixed Governor Don- 
nelly's position as one of the leaders of the House. It was a princi- 
pal cause of the establishment of the Bureau of Education, which, 
as I have said, is still a part of the National Government. 

A Philadelphia newspaper said : 

" Mr. Donnelly will bo remembered by this wise and noble measure long after 
his part in transitory politics is forgotten."' 

The Anoka Union (Minn.) said: 

" This movement will immortalize his name, whether he is permitted to wit- 
ness the consummation of his desires or not. His scheme, as has been well said, 
will nationalize America." 

George Alfred Townsend (" Gath ") wrote to the New York 

Tribune : 

'• He [Mr. Donnellv] is a smooth-faced, auburn-haired young man — tho young- 
est member of the House; and his speech for the Educational Bureau bill was an 
ardent and intelligent argument, conceived in gratitude [to the public-school sys- 
tem] and confirmed by conviction. He belongs to a singularly gifted family." 

And yet, strange to say, the officers of the Bureau of Education, 
from the day of its establishment to this hour, have never recoguized 
Governor Donnelly's connection with that work, while awarding 
great praise to others who either did nothing in the matter or very 
little. As soon as the bureau was established, Governor Ramsey, 
then a member of the United States Senate, secured the appoint- 
ment of Commissioner for one of his Minnesota friends, and about 
one-half of the first report consisted of praises of Ramsey, who had 
no more to do with the estabhshment of the bureau than the man 
in the moon. And this illustrates the dilTerence between a states- 
man and a politician. One saw an opportunity to benefit the whole 
people for all time ; the other saw an opportunity to obtain an ap- 
pointment for a follower. One labored for mankind; the other 
worked for himself. 



56 BIOGBAPHIGAL. 

Blaise's Indorsement. 

Hon. James G-. Blaine, commenting upon this debate, in Ms 
great work, Twenty Years of Congress, vol. II., p. 167, says : 

" One of the most striking speeches made in the House upon this subject was 
by Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, of Minnesota. He had carefully prepared for the debate, 
and dwelt with great force upon the educational features. 'Education,' he said, 
'means the intelligent exercise of liberty, and surely, without this, liberty is a 
calamity, since it means simply the unlimited right to err. "... 

After quoting still further from the speech, Mr. Blaine says : 
" It is worthy of remark that the question so cogently presented and enforced 
by Mr. Donnelly — that of the connection between education and suffrage— dis- 
closed the general fact that even among the Republicans there was no disposition, 
at this period, to confer upon the negro the right to vote." 

Teee-Planting. 

Governor DonneUy was the originator of another great move- 
ment. 

On May 18, 1866, by unanimous consent, he introduced the fol- 
lowing resolution, which was adopted : 

'' Besolved, That, in view of the almost complete absence of woods and forests 
in the interior regions of the continent, and of their paramount importance in the 
settlement and occupancy of the country, the Committee on Public Lands be di- 
rected to inquire whether a system cannot be devised whereby the planting of 
woods and forests may be encouraged in regions destitute of timber, by liberal 
donations of public lands, in alternate sections, to individuals or corporations, and 
the reservation of the adjoining sections by the Government, at an increased price, 
as in the case of railroad grants ; the lands so granted, or a proportional part 
thereof, to be planted with trees adapted to the climate and the needs of the com- 
munity." 

This suggestion, while it set thoughtful men all over the country 
to thinking, and eventually resulted in the passage of the Timber- 
Culture Act, under which hundreds of thousands and perhaps mil- 
hons of acres of land in the treeless parts of the United States have 
been planted with trees, was hailed with great shouts of ridicule by 
Mr. Donnelly's enemies in Minnesota. The leadiog Democratic 
paper, the St. Paul Pioneer, pubhshed an article in which it inserted 
a number of little wood-cuts of trees — the kind used for advertising — 
and underneath them, in large cajjitals, it placed the words: 

"These Aee the Tkees Do^^nelly Proposes to Plant on the Praieies!" 

In Western Minnesota one is hardly ever out of sight, to-day, 
of beautiful groves, in regions that previously did not possess a 
single tree, and which were planted under the impulse of the laws 
which grew out of Mr. Donnelly's resolution and speeches. The 
recent repeal of the Tree-Culture Act is to be regretted. It was 
probably due to the fact that the land-grabbers and the lumber- 
thieves "^saw no way under it of stealing the public domain. The 
law should be reeuacted with such alterations and safeguards as 
experience has suggested. 



ANOTHER HUMANE WORK. 57 

Another Humane ^^'()RK. 

On the first of May, 1800, Mr. Douuelly made a speech in oppo- 
sition to a hiotion of Mr. Chanler, of New York, to strike out section 
14 of an act to regulate immigration. Mr. Donnelly urged that the 
section should be retained, so as to prevent the overcrowding of 
emigrant ships and the consequent loss of life to the immigrants, as 
well as the importation of pestilence into the country, as in the case 
of vessels that had recently reached New York and Halifax. His 
views prevailed, and Chanler's amendment was defeated. 

The Bureau of Education Again. 

On June 5, 1860, Governor Donnelly spoke at length in favor of 
the establishment of the Bureau of Education. I regret that I can- 
not, for hick of space, quote extensively from this great speech. It 
was largely instrumental in securing the passage of the bill in the 
House. Mr. Donnelly said: 

"What pressing necessity results from these two great facts? Education — 
education for the white man of the South, that he vaar so wisely and liberally judge 
as to love the great Nation which lifts him up, and the flag wliich is the symbol of 
the noblest and broadest liberality in all this world. Education for the black man, 
that the new powers conferred upon him may not be merely brute forces, reacting 
against himself, but may be wisely directed to his own advantage and the glory of 
his country. Education for the country itself, that the entire population may rise 
to the level, and above the level, of the most favored localities, and that, as we are 
the freest, the bravest and the most energetic, so also we may become the most 
enlightened people npon the face of the earth, the foremost instruments in what- 
ever good Cxod may yet design to work out upon the globe. 

'•Is it not a shame, Mr. Speaker, that this nation, which rests solely and 
alone upon the intelligeure of its citizens, without which it could not exist for 
an hour, should thus far have done nothing, either to recognise or enforce educa- 
tion ? As John Adams said, 'The despotisms have stolen a march upon this Re- 
public in the liberal ])atronage of that education upon which a Republic is based.' 
. . . But the United States, whose theory of government is that if the people are 
ignorant they are necessarily unwise; if they are unwise they are necessarily mis- 
governed, and if they are misgoverned, every interest dear 1o tKe citizen is neces- 
sarily put in jeopardy; the United States, I say, whose very corner-stone is the 
enlightened judgment of each individual citizen, has allowed despotism to build up 
mighty systems in behalf of education, while in this, its capital, not a department, 
not a bureau, not even a clerkship, is to be found representing that grandest of all 
interests. . . . 

" Then let us eliminate that which is more dangerous than slavery — ignor- 
ance. Let us labor to make every man who votes an intelligent, self-conscious, 
reasoning, reflecting being. Then the true Republic will be realized. Then the 
struggle of parties will be, not to hold back the world, not to throw blocks before 
the car of progress, but to strike down every wrong, eveiy error, every injustice. 

" Pass this bill, and it will give education a mouth-piece and a rallying-point. 
While it will have no power to enter into the States and interfere with their system, 
it will be able to collect facts and report the same to Congress, to be thence spread 
over the entire country. It will throw a flood of light upon the dark places of our 
land. It will form a public sentiment which will arouse to increased activity the 
friends of education everywhere, and ignorance will fly before it. It will press for- 
ward in its work, from the bright villages of the North, down to the lowly huts of 
the poor whites and poorer freedmen in the South ; down to the bayous of Loui- 
siana, down to the everglades of Florida, down to the very shores of the Gulf. And 



58 mOGRAPmCAL. 

in its train what a glorions assemblage shall pour forward; — the newspapers, the 
pnblie libraries, the mnltipljing railroads, the improved machinery for agrienltnre, 
the increased comforts for the home; with liberality, generosity, mere}', jnstice and 
religion. . . . This is the foundation upon which time and our enormous 
national growth will build the noblest of structures. The hoi)e of Agassiz may here 
be realized; or even that grander dream of Bacon, — that university Avith unlimited 
power to do good, and with the whole world paying tribute to it! . . . 

"I can say, sir, with truth, that I press this measure with no unkind feeling 
toward the people of that unfortunate region [the South]. 1 will do all in my 
power to alleviate the sufferings they yet endure; their prosperity is identical with 
that of the country, and their elevation essential to the j)ermanence of the nation. 
I press this measure because it is just to all, and Avill be beneficent to all. 

" As war dies let peace rise from its ashes — white-winged, white-robed and 
luminous with the light of a new morning — a morning never to pass away while 
the world shall stand. Then may be said, in the language of one of oui' writers : 

" ' How they pale, 
Ancient myth' and song aiid tale, 

In this wonder of our day; 
When the cruel rod of war 

Blossoms white with righteous law, 
And the wrath of man is praise.' " 

One cannot help but experience a feeling of sorrow, when read- 
ing this speech, that such a man should be driven out of pubhc hfe 
by a gang of greedy Indian-ti'aders and thieving corporations — in 
fact, that for twenty-five years he should be compelled to make that 
farm-home at Nininger famous even through his literary labors, only 
by the irrepressible power of genius to force itself to the light. 

Safety for the Frontiers. 

On December 6, 1886, Mr. Donnelly introduced a preamble and 
resolution declaring that it was '^ a reproach to our government that 
its citizens cannot pass from one portion of the national domain to 
another without danger to life and property, at the hands of a few 
thousand savages, " therefore resolving that the Secretary of War be 
required to ^' thoroughly protect communication by two great routes 
across the continent, ■ ' one by the line of the Union Pacific Eailroad, 
the other by the future Northern Pacific Eailroad, etc. The resolu- 
tion was agreed to. 

Universal Suffrage. 

On January 18, 1867, Governor Donnelly delivered another 
speech which attracted great attention at the time. It was upon 
the question of universal and impartial suffrage. I have space for 
but a passage : 

"The purpose of government is the happiness of the people — therefore, of the 
wlwle people. A government cannot be half a republic and half a despotism — a re- 
public, just and equable to one class of its citizens; a despotism, cruel and destruc- 
tive to another class. It must become either all despotism or all republic. 

"If you make it all republic the future is plain. All evils will correct them- 
selves. Temporary disorders will subside ; the path will lie wide open before every 
man, and every step and every hour will take him farther- away from error and dark- 
ness. Give the right to vote, and you give the right to aid in making the laws. 
The laws, being made by all, will be for the benefit of all ; the improvement an^ 



BENOMIJSfATED FOB CON GUESS. 50 

advaurement of each niomber of the commuuity will be the improvement and ad- 
vaucemeut of the whole community. . . . The earth is (Tod's, and all the children 
of God have an equal right upon its surface. And human legislation which would 
seek to subvert this truth merely legislates injustice into law, and he who believes 
that injustice conserves the peace, order or welfare of society has read history to 
little pui-pose." 

The New York Tribune referred to this speech as an able argu- 
ment, and stated that, at the close of it, Mr, Donnelly received the 
congratulations of many of the leading members of the House. 

Kexominated for Congress, 1866. 

The Congressional District CouYentiou for the Second District of 
Minnesota was held at St. Paul September 20, 1866. A fierce fight 
had been made against Governor Donnelly's renoraiuation, headed 
by his old enemy, the St. Paul Press, and the famous " Bill King," 
publisher of the Minneapolis ^f/a5. The great warfare of Aristoc- 
racy against the Commoner now began in earnest. The battle 
raged in every county in the district, embracing two-thirds of the 
territory of the new State, a sparsely-settled region, larger than all 
New England. But when the convention assembled Mr. Donnelly 
was renominated on the first formal ballot, receiving forty votes, 
against twenty-eight, divided between three other candidates. The 
great combine against the people was not yet all-powerful. It had 
not ripened. I quote an extract or two from his acceptance speech: 

" It is my hope and belief that I shall never, in the future, say or do aught 
that shall lower the standard of human progress a hair's breadth, or that shall 
strengthen the arm of injustice or add a single pang to the sufferings of the op- 
pressed. By this light I have sought to interpret constitutions, politics, parties 
and laws. The right wrongs no man; and equal rights, equal opportunities and 
equal laws are a platform which cannot be resisted, since God and man alike ap- 
prove them. If I can know at the end of my public career, however long or how- 
ever short it may be, that the world has been benefited, in any degree, by my hav- 
ing lived, I shall feel that I have not existed in vain. . . . 

" I have striven not to degrade my constituents, but to be the mouth-piece and 
exponent of all that was best and truest and noblest in their thoughts and aspira- 
tions." 

The Declaration of Independence. 

"There is," he continued, "in the Patent Office at Washington, a timeworn, 
discolored, rudely-written parchment. The signatures are faded; the illustrious 
men who penned them have long since perished fnto dust. But the principles written 
there have not faded. They are to-day inscribed in ineffaceable characters in 
millions of brains ; millions o'f hearts dilate when they are uttered ; millions of breasts 
are bared to the deadly hail of battle when they are imperiled. The emigrant 
hails them afar off, his face shining with promise ; to them the dusky freedman 
looks up as to the everlasting stars of the sky ; — they are that consummation and 
crystalization of the Sermon on the Mount, contained in the august declaration of 
the inalienable right of a^^ men to life, liberty and happiness." 

The Debate with Colonel Robertson. 

In this campaign a prominent and able Democrat, Col. D. A. 
Robertson, of St. Paul, challenged Governor Donnelly to a public dis- 
cussion. The result was so overwhelming that no man in Minnesota 



60 BIOGBAPHTCAL. 

has siuce had the temerity to follow his example. Even Mr. Don- 
nehy's old enemy, the St. Paul Press, though usually bitterly hostile 
to Mr. Donnelly, could not refrain from saying, in its issue of Nov. 
24, 1886 : 

" His speech was the ablest and most powerful effort of campaign oratory ever 
delivered in this city, and in this Ave but express the general opinion of those who 
heard it. We give elsewhere a pretty full report of his speech, though no report 
can do full justice to the keen and incisive force of his arguments, or the telling 
home-thrusts with which it abounded. Every argument or statement of his 
opponent was met and refuted with an irresistible cogency that elicited bursts of 
uproarious and prolonged applause from the audience. The blank, spell-bound 
silence of the numerous Democrats present, no less than the exultant and respons- 
ive enthusiasm of the Kepublicans, was an eloquent testimony to the unanswerable 
logic of Mr. Donnelly's exposition of the great principles at issue." 

Eeelected to Congress. 

Despite the continued opposition of the St. Paul Press, which, 
by all sorts of insidious arguments, sought to slay Mm, Mr. Donnelly 
was reelected by an increased majority. His opponent was Colonel 
Wm. Colville, a strong Democrat, with a brilhant war record. He 
received 7,754 votes, while Mr. Donnelly received 12,022 — a major- 
ity of 4,268. 

The Old Bond Swindle. 

During the year 1867 Mr. Donnelly became involved in the fierce 
battle which was raging about the payment of nearly two and a half 
million dollars of State bonds which had been issued at the time of 
the admission of the State into the Union. The original law was a 
trick and a fraud practiced upon the people of the State. Under its 
terms that vast indebtedness was saddled on the new State for the 
grading of road-beds of railroads alone, and at the rate of $10,000 
per mile, while the grading actually cost from $300 to $500 per mile ! 
The result was that the peox)le found themselves involved in a debt 
of vast amount, without a mile of iron, or railroad, or a single car to 
show for it. It was a base and intentional swindle, and the Eepub- 
lican party first came into power in the State, in 1859, on the plat- 
form of repudiating the debt caused thereby. 

Mr. Donnelly had taken no part in this battle, but was at length 
dragged into it, by an attack in the St. Paul Press, and in reply he 
took ground against the pending proposition in a letter to the Press. 
And his arguments were so cogent and conclusive that the people 
voted the proposition down by an overwhelming vote. Since then 
the persistent holders of the old bonds have effected a settlement 
with the State, whereby they secured State bonds, bearing 4i per 
cent, interest, for nearly four million dollars, with 500,000 acres of 
land, worth $2,500,000, as security for a debt which originally cost 
them about $300,000 or $400,000 ! The whole history of the State of 
Minnesota has been written in fraud and corruption, and this great 
State debt remains as one of the colossal monuments of its history. 



THE FORTIETH CONGRESS. 61 

The Fortieth Congress. 

We come now to the record of the last term o^f. Congress in which 
Mr. Donnelly ever served. '% 

And here we come to a story as strange and terrible as any ever 
known in the history of politics — its parallel can hardly he found 
in the pages of fiction. 

Bill King is Elected Postmaster. 

Bill King had opposed Governor Donnelly in the Congressional 
contest of 1866. When the House assembled in December, 1867, 
King was on hand as a candidate for postmaster. He found, however, 
that, as Governor Donnelly represented the district in which he 
lived, he could not succeed without his support. He sent Mr. Win- 
dom. Governor Donnelly's colleague in the House, to liim, to beg 
him not to fight King. Mr. Windom made a personal appeal to 
Governor Donnelly. He said he had loaned money to King, and had 
indorsed his paper, and if King did not get the office of postmaster, 
he would lose every cent of it. He begged him as 7^/5 friend, and as 
a favor to Mm, not to oppose King. Then King came to Donnelly, 
and, with tears in his eyes, implored him to help him. He said he 
was sick and poor, he had been unfortunate in some New York spec- 
ulations, and he and his family would suffer greatly if he did not 
get the place. He said the poor-house stared them all in the face. 
Mr. Donnelly could not stand the tears, and at last, with that mag- 
nanimity which is almost a weakness of character with him, he 
agreed to vote for King in the Eepubhcan caucus. But he said : 
" King, for Windom's sake, I shall vote for you; but do not send any 
member of the House to me to recommend you, or I shall be cer- 
tain to tell them that you are the biggest rascal in America ; but if 
my single vote is of any use to you, you can have it." King was 
profuse in his thanks. The caucus was held. Governor Donnelly 
voted an open ballot for King (Windom was one of the tellers), and 
King was nominated for postmaster hy just one majority. Gov- 
ernor Donnelly's vote had given him the victory. But it was an un 
fortunate vote for Donnelly — the most unfortunate he ever cast. 

King's Gratitude. 

Immediately after the vote was taken King met Governor Dol' 
nelly in one of the lobbies ; he threw bis arms around his neck, and 
blubbered over him, and said : '^ Donnelly, you have treated me a 
thousand times better than I deserved; and all the rest of my life 
shall be devoted to proving my gratitude. You have saved me and 
my family from ruin. " 

Ho^He Proved His Gratitude. 

In January, 18891, the election of United States Senator from 
Minnesota came oft' at St. Paul. Shortly before it was to occur, in 



62 , ^^^^ JBIOGBAPHICAL. 

December, 1688^ King came to G-overnor Donnelly in Washington, 
and said to him : 

" Governor, a year ago you saved me from destruction. I told 
you then that the rest of my life should be devoted to i^roving my 
gratitude. The time has come to do so. I am going to St. Paul 
to-morrow. I shall take a suite of rooms, and shall do my utmost to 
make you United States Senator." 

Governor Donnelly thanked him and said: " While I am grate- 
ful to you, I do not think it right that you should go to that expense 
on niy*^ account. Let me give you money enough to pay your travel- 
ing and hotel expenses." 

" Never mind that," rephed King; " we can settle all that after 
you are elected." 

Governor Donnelly afterwards learned that at that very mo- 
ment King had three tJiousand dollars of Bamsey^s money in Ms 
pocket. 

When Mr. Donnelly reached St. Paul, King called on him at 
once, professing the most earnest friendship, and Mr. D., incapable 
of believing that any man could be guilty of such infinite baseness,, 
told him all his secrets, and from day to day King called and Don- 
nelly unbosomed himself to this tool of his enemies. 

The MiDifiGHT Visit. 

And so the work of deception continued until the senatorial fight 
drew very near to a ballot. Governor Donnelly's room was in the old 
Merchants', then a frame building. The next room was occupied 
by Mr. Abne-r Tibbetts, a member of the House from Lake City, and 
Governor Donnelly's principal advocate in the senatorial fight. The 
partition between the two rooms was very thin, and one night, after 
miduight, Mr. Donnelly was awakened by a great uproar in Tib- 
betts' room; he heard voices high in argument, and violently profane 
language, which he thought he recognized as King's. The next 
morning Tibbetts explained it all. He said that King had come to his 
room at midnight and told him that the time had come to throw off 
the mask; that he, King, had been fooling Donnelly all along, but 
that he was now doomed, and 'that Tibbetts must tu)-n in and vote 
for Eamsey. Tibbetts refused to do so. And King went back to 
the Ramsey headquarters and boasted of how he had deceived and 
&pied upon the man who had saved him from ruin. 

A FuETHER Depth of Villainy. 

Subsequently King tried to destroy the character of the man 
he had so treacherously used, and in the great libel suit, of which I 
shall speak hereafter, took the stand and swore that in the senator- 
ial fight he and his brother Dana were not supporting Governor 
Donnelly, and that on his first visit to Governor Donnelly, on his 
arrival in St. Paul, Governor Donnelly had offered him. King, 



THE FOUTIETH CONGRESS, 63 

$3,000, with which to bribe his brother Dana, who was then a 
member of the Legislature, to vote for him, Donnelly, for Senator. 
But, on cross-examination, certain old letters of King and his 
brother, written in 1868, were submitted to him, which showed the 
true state of the case, and thereupon King adapted himself to what 
could not be denied, and swore that he and Dana were both earnest 
and ardent supporters of Governor Donnelly in that senatorial con- 
test as long as he was a candidate : forgetting that this admission 
gave the lie to the charge of attempted bribery, for if Dana King 
was always a supporter of Governor Donnelly, "there was no reason 
why he, Donnelly, should offer Bill King $3,000 with which to bribe 
Dana to support him ! Even the most experienced villain some- 
times slips up when brought face to face with evidence which he 
supposed was destroyed. 

But I do not think the whole history of human rascality can 
present a more terrible instance of ingratitude, duplicity, treachery 
and wickedness than that of this man toward his generous and 
kind-hearted benefactor. Judas, it is true, betrayed Christ with a 
kiss, but it was a momentary treason, and he expiated his crime, 
the next day, by hanging himself; but King still flourishes, with 
unabashed and brazen face, glorying in his iniquity, and ready to go 
into court, twenty-two years afterward, and attempt to swear 
away the character of the man he had betrayed and destroyed, and 
who had been his friend at the most gloomy point of his ifortunes. 
It is a shocking narrative, and we record it here, not out of any 
malevolence toward King, but simply to show this generation aud 
posterity the character of the men and the influence which drove 
Ignatius Donnelly out of public life. 

Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander. 

On the 11th day of March, 1867, Mr. Donnelly introduced the 
following xH-eamble and resolutions, which explain themselves : 

'■ Whereas, the government of Great Britain did, so soon as an armed rebel- 
lion appeared within the limits of the United States, hasten to accord to the rebels 
belligerent rights, and, thereafter, during the whole course of the war, continued 
to give moral and material aid to the same, furnishing them with arms, munitions 
and vessels of war, inflicting thereby incalculable injury npon our foreign com- 
merce, aud greatly increasing our sacrifices of men and monej-, in the suppression 
of the rebellion. 

And u-hereas, the said government of Great Britain has hitherto refused to pay 
the government of the United States for any part of the enormous damage so in- 
flicted upon the commerce of the United States. 

And vhereas, the Irish people, after having suffered for centuries the burdens 
of an lieroditary aristocracy, an established church, and a system of laws designed 
expressly for their impoverishment, have at last risen in rebellion, and are now 
waging a gallant, though unequal, contest with the government of Great Britain : 
Therefore, 

'^ Resolved, That the profoundest sympathies of the American people are en- 
listed in behalf of the people of Ireland, in their efforts to establish a republican 
government m Ireland, upon the basis of uiiiversal suffrage ftud a total separation 
\)\' ('hnrch and State. 



64 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

"■ Besolved, That the Committee on Foreign Affairs, is hereby instructed to 
report to this House what legislation, if any, is necessary to enable the executive 
of the United States to accord to the people of Ireland helligerent rights, and 
generally to enable the executive to follow in every parti ciilar the precedents es- 
tablished by Great Britain during the late rebellion." 

Hon. Thaddeus Stevens^ of Pennsylvania, objected to the intro- 
duction of iLie resolution. Mr. Donnelly moved to suspend the rules. 
There was great alarm among the English party, and to prevent a 
test vote, Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, moved that the House adjourn, 
and the motion prevailed. Unfortunately for Mr. Donnelly, the 
Irish insurrection collapsed before the House met again. If it could 
have organized and held possession of even a small strip of territory 
and maintained the forms of government, Mr. Donnelly's resolution 
would have been adopted, and it would have been the most laughable 
incident of the century to have seen England's precedents applied 
to England's own case, and the seas swarming with American priva- 
teersmen, under the Irish flag, playing hob with the commerce of 
Great Britain, as she had played hob with ours. 

Feee Schools in the South. 

Mr. Donnelly continued to work away on behalf of education. 
On the 25th of March, 1867, he presented the following, which was 
adopted : 

"Wheeeas, 'Religion, morality and knowledge are,' in the language of 
Jefferson in the Ordinance of 1787, ' necessary to good government and the happi- 
ness of mankind,' therefore schools and the means of education should be every- 
where established ; and irhereas, from various causes, the interests of popular edu- 
cation liave been so greatly neglected, in the States lately in rebellion, that nearly 
one-half of the voting population there are, at the present time, unable to read and 
write ; and ivhereas, such a state of things cannot long continue with safety to the 
nation or to the best interests, prosperity and happiness of the people of the States ; 
therefore, 

^^Be^olved. That this House expresses its earnest hope that the people of 
the States lately in insun-ection will, in reorganizing the same, in accordance 
with existing laws for that purpose, insert in their respective State Constitutions 
a provision requiring the legislature to establish and maintain a system of free 
schools which shall afford adequate opportunity for the public education of all the 
childi-en of the State." 

This resolution, which was unanimously adopted by the House, 
had an excellent effect in calling attention to a great question, and 
its suggestions were carried out throughout the Southern States with 
the most excellent results. 

Eelief eor the South. 

While Governor Donnelly naturally and properly shared in the 
feehngs of the North as to the rebellion and the civil war, he lost no 
opportunity to show that his heart was generous enough to sympa- 
thize with the people of the South in their misfortunes. On the 13th 
of March, 1867, a joint resolution (No. 16) came up for consideration 
in the House, which proposed to appropriate a million dollars to 



BELIEF FOR THE SOUTH. (Jo 

purchase supplies of food to be distributed, by the Secretary of War, 
" in those Southern and Southwestern States where a failure of crops 
and other causes have occasioned wide-spread destitution." Hon. 
Fernando Wood, the famous Democratic leader of New York City, 
opposed the grant vigorously. He was followed by Hon. WiUiam 
Williams, of Indiana, a Republican member. He was "opposed," 
he said, " to taxing the one-armed and limbless soldiers of the Re- 
public to pay money to the women and children of rebels, who, with 
malignant hatred, spat upon our soldiers, wounded and weary in 
their march to the sea." He was followed by Mr. Chanler, of IS'ew 
York, Democrat, who also opposed the passage of the grant. It was 
a time of fierce passions ; the civil wrfr had just ended. General 
Butler moved to amend that the milhon dollars should go to the 
widows of those who were starved to death in the rebel prisons of 
Andersonville, Libby, etc. General Logan also opposed the resolu- 
tion. Mr. Boyer, of Pennsylvania, Democrat, supported the grant. 
Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, Republican, also spoke for it. So, also, did 
General Garfield. Men divided according to their instincts, and 
party lines were forgotten. John Covode, of Pennsylvania, in a 
speech worthy of the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parlia- 
ment, cited the case of King Ahab, told of in the Old Testament, 
who was instructed by the Lord to go out and make war upon the 
Assyrians, under King Benhadad, and when he had conquered 
them, to utterly exterminate them. But King Ahab, after he had 
slain 100,000 Assyrians, thought he had done enough to satisfy the 
wrath of God, and he pardoned Benhadad, the king, and therefore 
King Ahab and all his sons were slain by the Lord. " Now, I ask, 
gentlemen," John Covode said, in conclusion, " if they suppose the 
Lord is done with punishing the rebels of this country?" And 
therefore he was opposed to the Government feeding the starving 
women and children of the South. 

It is pleasant to turn from such a screed of fanaticism and 
hatred to the utterances of Governor Donnelly. He took a leading 
part in the discussion. He made three speeches and secured an 
amendment providing that if the million dollars appropriated were not 
sufficient " to save men, women and children from death by starva- 
tion," then any other further sum was to be expended by the War 
Department. I make two Or three extracts from his remarks on 
this question. I would note that the joint resolution finally passed 
by a vote of 98 to 31, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Donnelly's 
efforts very greatly contributed to that end : 

'•The war is at an end. The bitterness and acrimony that accompanied it 
should die with it. We must base this Government of ours' upon the love of the 
people. We cannot permit the now empty seats, upon the other side of this cham- 
ber, to be filled by a race cf men who will be the hereditary enemies of the land 
they assist in governing. This Government, as it must rest upon the free will of 
the people, must rest also upon the love of the people. . . . 

" I am sorry to hear these appeals made to the natural prejudices and natural 
bitterness which exist in our hearts. 1 am sony to hear these references to Ander- 

5 



66 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

sonville and Libby prisons. Let us recollect that if we, the representatives of the 
American people, after having been brought face to face, by oflQcial proof, with 
the knowledge of this starvation in our land, now withhold the hand of relief, 
then, in the eyes of the civilized world, we will have placed ourselves on a level 
with the very rebels who starved our men to death. . . . 

"The chronicles of England preserve the memory of an Anglo-Saxon bishop 
who, in a time of famine, took the gold and silver ornaments from the altars of his 
churches and the decorations from "their walls, and sold them to purchase food for 
the starving multitudes. And when one, who looked rather to the letter than to 
the spirit of religion, would have rebuked him for his act, he made a noble 
answer, which will live through all time : ' That it was better that the living 
temples of the Lord should be fed, even though the dead temples of the Lord should 
go empty.' . . . 

"1 have somewhere read of a gallant Swede, of the army of Charles XII., who, 
at the close of one of the great battles fought by that sovereign, sought to assist a 
wounded and dying enemy, giving him water to drink, from his own 'canteen. In the 
very moment that he was thus aiding him, the dying man. still full of the rage of the 
battlefield, attempted to take the lite of his benefactor. The gallant soldier never- 
theless stayed his hand, and aided, with others, to bear him to a place of safety. 
When the King heard of the noble act he sent for the soldier and rewarded his 
humanity by promotion. He asked him, however, how it came that he did not 
strike an enemy who thus sought to take his life even while he was relieving him ? 
' Sire, ' he replied, ' my heart would not permit me to strike a prostrate and helpless 
man.' 

" So I say now, in the presence of this suffering and this death, I have not the 
heart to remember anything save only that these people are human, and, ' being 
human, pitiable. ' " 

Settleks on Public La:nds. 

On the .]-5th of January, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech in 
favor of a bill, introduced by his colleague Mr. Windom, to permit 
settlers on the pubhc land^ to make the necessary proofs before the 
clerk of the nearest court, without being obliged to travel, perhaps, 
hundreds of miles to the land office, at heavy expense, which the 
poor frontiersmen could ill afford. Mr. Elihu Washburne, of Illinois, 
who perceived that Mr. Donnelly was rapidly advanciug to the fore- 
most ranks otthe House, and that, if he was not crippled in some 
way, his brother Wilham, who resided in Mr. Donnelly's Congres- 
sional district, could never come to Congress, proceeded to make a 
fierce fight upon this just and humane measure. But he was de- 
feated, the bill passing by a vote of 81 to 15. All this was very irri- 
tating to Washburne, "and helped precipitate the storm which soon 
after burst on Mr. Donnelly's head. 

SOTJTHEEN RAILEOAD GRANTS. 

On January 29, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech in favor of 
the Government reassuming possession of five million acres of land, 
held by railroad companies, in the South, that bad forfeited the 
same by not complying with the terms of their grants. He urged 
that these lands should be restored to the pubhc domain and given, 
under the Homestead Act, to the people of the South, white and 
black, in tracts of forty acres each, thus making homes for more 



THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AGAIN. (37 

than six hundred thousand poor people. In the course of the debate 
he said: 

"I do not believe there is, any reasonable legislation the reconstructed States 
of the South can ask at the hands of the North which the North will not willingly 
and promptly grant. Being once back in the Union, it will be our pleasure and 
delight to nourish them iuto prosperity and do ever}'thing in our power to devel- 
op that entire Southern country. " 

The money of the wealthy corporations who owned these roads 
was too potent to he overcome in the interest of the people, and 
the bill was eventually defeated. 

Eights of American Citizens in Foeeign Countkies. 

On January 30, 1868, Mr. Donnelly made a speech, in the House, 
and took strong ground against the imprisonment of American 
naturalized citizens by foreign governments, then being practiced 
in Europe. He declared that Congress should announce its ulti- 
matum that any such act was "just ground for war," and let 
European nations understand that if they imprisoned our citizens 
they had got to fight for it. 

The Department of Education Again. 

A lively battle occurred on February 12, 1868. Elihu Wash- 
burne, acting chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, 
probably because Mr. Donnelly was largely instrumental in secur- 
ing the passage of the act establishing the Bureau of Education, 
contrived to have the appropriation for the support of the bureau 
left out of the appropriation bill, and Mr. Donnelly moved to rein- 
state it. Washburne fought it hard, and in a very unfair and tricky 
way. Mr. Donnelly showed, in an exceedingly courteous manner, 
that Washburne had grossly misstated the facts in several particu- 
lars. He showed that the appropriation asked for amounted to 
one- thirty-fourth part of a cent for each inhabitant of the United 
States. In fact he squelched Mr. Washburne complete>y. He 
wound up with these pregnant sentences: 

"We cannot pay too high a price for the national safety or the national life. 
School-houses in this generation ivill prevent tvars in the next. Education, in the long 
run, is always cheaper than ignorance.''^ 

Fernando Wood, as was to be expected, came to the help of 
Elihu Washburne. General Garfield held up the hands of Mr. Don- 
nellv. He showed that the bill had passed, in the previous Congress, 
by a vote of 80 to 44 — by a strict party vote — while Washburne, 
with his usual mendacity, had stated that it had only one or two ma- 
iority. He also showed^that the example of Congress, in estabhsh- 
ing the Bureau of Education, had been most favorably commented 
on by foreign nations, and that — 

"One of the Ujiditig inenilxis ( fllic Eiiglisli [•arliamciit. on the 2d of Decem- 
ber, 1867, had moved that a siniilni- department be created, and that a Minister (.f 
Education should have a seat iu the cabinet as one of the counselors of her Maj- 



68 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

estj." . . . '' TJie bill establishing the departmerLt," he continued, "has been no- 
ticed in all the nations and languages of Europe, as a step in the direction which 
nations must take to secure the liberty of the people and the safety of the Gov- 
ernment." 

Washburne's opposition, supported by Fernando Wood, pre- 
vailed for a time, and the appropriation for the support of the Bureau 
of Education was killed. The Senate, however, refused to accede to 
this contemptible action and preserved the bureau. But all this 
showed how Washburne was writhing under the general recognition 
of Mr. Donnelly's ability. 

Settlees on Indian Lands in Kansas. 

On March 6, 1868, Governor Donnelly secured the passage of an 
amendment, offered by him, to the bill in reference to the Osage 
Indian lands in Kansas, whereby both the odd and even numbered 
sections should be sold at public sale, to actual settlers, so that the 
settlers should have the right to pay for them in installments, where 
they could not pay all cash. Thus the speculators were shut out and 
the settlers enabled to secure their homesteads. 

He Canvasses Connecticut and New Hampshiee. 

In the spring of 1868, Governor Donnelly, at the request of the 
State committees, made a canvass of the States of Connecticut and 
New Hampshire, in behalf of the Eepublican ticket, holding immense 
meetings and doing very effective work, for which he was warmly 
thanked by the leading men of those States. 

The Evils of Land Grants. 
The injurious influences which flow from land grants to rail- 
road companies, and which are now, after the lapse of a quarter of 
a century, so plainly apparent to every one, were foreseen by Gov- 
ernor Donnelly, and he labored to prevent them. He acknowl- 
edged the importance of railroads to such vast regions of country as 
are embraced in the West. He said, in a speech delivered in the 
House May 7, 1868 : 

" The importance of the railroad system to the West can not be overestimated. 
The grain raised upon land forty miles from a railroad or any great water course 
is almost valuelesss, save for home consumption, and a people so situated must 
continue in a poor, primitive and unprogressive condition. Unable to exchange 
the surplus productions of their soil for agricultural implements, manufactured 
goods, or the manifold necessities or luxuries of life, they lapse, in a generation 
or two, into a semi-barbarous and Avretched condition." 

I firmly believe that water-navigation and intercourse would 
lead to greater and better results than the railway system, and that 
the statistics of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan demonstrate 
the proposition. Governor Donnelly's speech exhibits his liberality 
upon these issues, and his willingness to accord credit where doubt 
exists. 



riJK EVILS OF LAND GBAXTS. (>9 

He oven admitted that railroads could not have been built, 
(it that time, without the aid of land grants, and perhaps in that 
respect he was right. 

But he further said: 

" I am of the opinion that we should resort to all measures which will tend 
to lessen the evils which are necessarily incident to such gigantic corporations. The 
greatest of these is the Avithdrawal of'large bodies of public land, along the line 
of the roads, from settlemout.'' 

He, therefore, advocated a bill, H. F. 370, introduced by Hon. 
George W. Julian, which provided that all grants of lands to railroad 
companies (the odd-numbered sections) should be placed in the 
hands of tlie States in which the lands are situated, as trustees for 
the corp(n-ations, and the States should sell the lands to actual settlers, 
at a fixed price, and deliver the proceeds to the railroad companies. 
He said : 

•' The conversion of lauds into farms and the construction of the railroad 
would proceed side by side; the farms would furnish business for the road ; the 
road would furnish an outlet for the productions of tlie farms. Thus commerce 
and agriculture would meet on equal terms and mutually assist each other. It is 
in this marriage of the wisdom of legislation with the Avants ami necessities of the 
})(.'ople that the highest statesmanship will be found to exist . . . 

" We, cannot overrate the importance of the subdivision of the land among 
the people. Being the original parent of all wealth, its blessing should be wide- 
spread and should reach as many as possible ; otherwise it will concentrate in a few 
hands, and then will follow plethora for the few and pauperism for the many, until 
at last we realize the pitiful and lamentable condition of Europe, where the blood 
ami tears and sweat of the afflicted cry from the earth like the blood of Abel. 

" Now, Mr. Speaker, we owe to every man who desires to possess it a reason- 
able portion of the unoccupied land of the nation. The right inheres in him and 
it inheres in the great mass of his fellow-men, because he and they are alike to be 
beneiited, he directly, they indirectly. That right the homestead law recognizes 
and protects." 

Speaking of the poor laborers of Europe, he said : 

"How pitiful, Mr. Speaker, is the condition of those populations? They lie 
at the base of a column of injustices heaped high above them. How desolate is the 
cry which their wretchedness, their misery, their very sinfulness, sends up to 
heaven ? How pale, how bloodless are their poor faces as they gather in the fetid 
alleys of the great cities of the Old World, or sit down patiently to their insutii- 
eieiit food in miserable cabins ? The Avhole past of the human family seems to rest 
crushingly upon them. Conquests a thousand years old yet press upon their 
shoulders'. The distinctions of race and caste and religion, and all the million 
forms of injustice growing out of these, yet hold them under their feet. They look 
to the laws, and they are against them ; they look to the land, and it is occupied; 
they can only hope by the most cruel and unceasing toil to snatch a living more 
scant, more precarious than that which the gaunt wolf gathers in the depths of the 
forest." 

Protecting the Eights of Actual Settlers. 

On June 4, 1868, Governor Donnelly reported back and secured 
the passage of an act. House bill No. "23, to prevent the entry of 
more than three sections of pubhc lands in any township by means 
of agricultural college scrip. He showed that in some sections whole 



70 BIOGMAVmCAL. 

townships were being seized upon by speculators — the purchasers 
of that scrip — to the exckision of actual settlers. 

Mail Sekvice to Moe^taina and Idaho. 

On the 19th of June, 1868, there was a lively contest over a bill, 
asked by the Postmaster- General, to increase the mail service be- 
tween Fort Abercrombie and Helena from " pony service '' to " stage 
service; " at an additional cost of $50,000, thereby saving a distance of 
a thousand miles in the transportation of mails and passengers. A 
very illiberal opposition was made to the bill by some Eastern 
members, probably in the interest of the Union Pacific Railroad, led 
by Hon. Hamilton Ward, of New York. The bill was finally passed, 
after a hard fight, by a vote of 57 yeas to 50 nays. In the course of 
the debate the following passage-at-arms took place: 

Mr. Ward. " How do we know that it is a just and righteous .measure if we 
do not find it out through the instrumentality of the committee appointed for the 
purpose of ascertaining the facts ? How do we kaow 1 " 

Mr. Donnelly. "By that common sense and judgment with which God has 
endowed most men." 

Mr. Ward. "The gentleman has more than his share, and I was inquiring 
for a little of his." 

Mr. Donnelly. ' ' I should be happy, if time permitted, to fully enlighten the 
gentleman — hut it would take time ! " 

It is unnecessary to state that Mr. Ward discovered the House 
convulsed with laughter — at him. 

The Puechase of Alaska. 

On July 1, 1868, there was quite a conflict in the House over the 
appropriation of $10,000,000 for the purchase of Alaska. Mr. Don- 
nelly said : 

" I shall vote for this bill because I consider it one of the necessary steps in 
the expansion of our institutions and nationality over the entire domain of the 
North American continent. From both North and South the territory and the peo- 
ple of the continent gravitate inevitably toward us, drawn by our steadily increas- 
ing greatness, the benignity of our institutions, and the individual prosperity 
manifested everywhere throughout all our broad expanse. . . . There is no reason 
why those institutions should not extend, on the one hand, to that thread of land 
which ties together the Northern and Southern continents, and, on the other hand, 
to the extreme limits of human habitation under the frozen constellations of the 
North. ... 

' ' "When the traces of the great rebellion shall have passed away, when the 
debt incurred in its suppression shall have been extinguished, or shall have been 
dwarfed into insignificance, compared with the vastness of our population and the 
magnitude of our wealth ; when our institutions shall have been pm-ified from 
evexy taint of the old and the cruel past, and shall be sublimated and refined into 
the very perfection of human justice and Christian benevolence, and when our 
nationality shall have expanded until it fades out beneath the fire of the tropics, 
on the one hand, or disappears along the margin of the eternal snows, on the other, 
we- shall present to the world the aspect of a nation greater, mightier, wiser and 
happier than any ever known before to man in the whole tide of time. We will 
be a nation that by the mere power of its moral influence shall compel justice and 
destroy injustice in all the lands of the earth." 



THE TllO UBL E WITH THE WA SHB UBN FAMIL Y. 71 

The chief opponent of the purchase of Alaska was C. C. Wash- 
burn, of Wisconsin. He declared that the country was worthless, 
that there were no fur-bearing animals in it, etc. He was assisted 
by the " liberal-minded " Elihu, his brother, who voted against the 
])urcbase. But the bill passed. Tho seal fisheries have turned out 
to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and there is no conceiv- 
able sum for which the United States would to-day sell the Terri- 
tory of Alaska to any foreign nation. As Mr. Donnelly said, in the 
course of the debate: 

•'With OUT great nation on the south and our new acquisition resting upon 
the north, British domination will be inevitably pressed out of Western British 
America. It Avill disappear between the upper a'nd the nether mill-stones. These 
jaws of the nation will swallow it up." 

The Trouble With the Washburn Family. 

I have shown that trouble was brewing between Mr. Donnelly 
and Ehhu Washburne. For four years Mr. William D. Washburn, 
brother of Elihu, had been a candidate for Congress against 
Mv. Donnelly. 

He failed in 1864, because he insisted that all the other candi- 
dates in the district must withdraw and unite on him, and defeat 
;Mr. Donnelly in that way. Each of the other candidates preferred 
himself to Mr. Donnelly, but preferred Mr. Donnelly to any of 
the rest, and so Mr. Donnelly was renominated. 

In 186G he adopted a different plan. He urged some one prom- 
inent man in each principal county to be a candidate for Congress, 
and to bring his delegation to the convention, intending, when he 
got them there, to unite all the opposition in his own behalf. But, 
when that point was reached, again Mr. Donnelly was the choice 
of so manv delegates that he was renominated, and on the first 
ballot, by a vote of 40 to 28. 

Since 1866 Mr. Donnelly had been steadily rising in the estima- 
tion of the people both in Minnesota and throughout the whole 
country; his reputation was becoming national. The Washburn 
family were in distress, and the Washburn family carried the armor 
of modern plutocracy ! They knew not what to do. William must 
come to Congress — it was the Heaven-appointed destiny of the 
family — but how was he to get there while that able and indus- 
trious man stood in his way? Donnelly m^«5^ be got rid of. But 
how ? It was evident he could not be defeated in the Congressional 
conventions. It w\as therefore decided that the great Elihu — the 
head of the family — -must jump upon and crush him to death. 
Everything favored such a scheme. It w'as evident that the victor- 
ious Union General, Ulysses S. Grant, w^as certain to be President. 
Washburne lived in Grant's town. Galena, and he was generally 
supposed to be Grant's right-hand man — the power behind the 
throne. Presuming on this fact, Washburne played the dictator in 



72 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

dongress. A man of very little intellect (for none of the family were 
intellectual), but of great energy and force, lie felt the full prestige 
of his accidental position. He was surrounded by all those cringing 
ruultitudes that always gather around men who are supposed to pos- 
sess power and patronage. Mr. Donnelly was a young man, without 
powerful family connections, without wealth, without church or any 
other kind of influence to sustain him. Elihu Washburne reasoned 
that if he assailed and denounced Mr. Donnelly from the height of his 
position, <is the supposed premier of the incoming administration^ it 
would absolutely destroy him; and if, in addition to this, he corfld 
blacken his reputation, he would ruin him as a man and citizen, and 
so end him. It was necessary not only to kill him oft" as a Congress- 
man, but as a politician. William must come to Congress over his 
corpse. 

Mr. Donnelly's relations with Elihu Washburue had always been 
pleasant, if not cordial, as they were with every member of Congress. 
It was necessary that Washburne must pick a quarrel with him to 
justify the ouslaueht he was about to make. Mr. Donnehy, in his 
speech in Congress May 2d, 1868, tells how this was accomplished : 

"Mr. Speaker, on the 20th of March hast, I asked, in this House, nnanimous 
consent to introduce a bill for a land grant, to aid in the construction of a railroad 
from the town of Taylor's Falls, in the State of Minnesota, by the way of St. Cloud, 
to the western boundary of the State; and asked that it be referred to the Committee 
of Public Lands and printed. An objection was made by the gentleman from Illinois 
(Mr. Washburne). I did not hear any other objection at the time. Itseems, howoyer, 
that the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Holman) had also objected. I immediately 
went to the gentleman from Illinois, and said to him that I was about to leave the 
city, to go to the State of Connecticut, to labor in behalf of the Kepublican party in 
that State, that I must leayo the next day, and that I would be obliged to him. as a 
personal favor, if he would withdraw his objection and permit me to introduce the 
bill. His answer to me was, 'Air. Holman has objected.' Taking it for granted 
that he meant that he would not press his objection, I went to Mr. Holman. I made 
the same statement to him, and, although opposed to me in politics, he was gentle- 
man enough to say that he would not interfere with the mere introduction of the 
bill, and he rose, as you will recollect, Mr. Speaker, and said that, although 
opposed to land grants, he was not opposed to the introduction and reference of 
the bill, and withdrew his objection. [There was really scarcely any public land on 
the proposed line, but the citizens of Taylor's Falls wanted the bill simply for 
the charter. E. W. F.] The Speaker again put the question, and stated that the 
bill would have its first and second readings, when the gentleman from Illinois 
rose in his seat and said : ' 1 also object ; ' and it was impossible for me to intro- 
duce the bill. I was filled, as any gentleman would l^e, with indignation at 
this course, at this seeming ill faith, and I sat down and wrote a letter to the 
gentleman in Minnesota most interested in that project, and who had written to 
me upon the subject, and stated merely the facts. I send the letter to the clerk's 
desk to be read : 

'"jSb?i. W. H. G. Folsom, Taylor'' s Falls, Minnesota: 

" ' I have carefully prepared a bill for a grant of lands to the State of Minnesota, 
to aid in the construction of a railroad ' ' from Taylor's Falls, via St. Cloud, to the 
western boundary of the State," as will appear by a copy of the Globe which I will 
send you to-morrow. Mr. E. B. Washburne, of Illinois, twice objected, and pre- 
vented its introduction and reference to the Committee on Public Lands. As 
unanimous consent was necessary, the objection made by Mr. Washburne has de- 



THE GUEAT AKTT-WASHBVltNE SPEECH. T.\ 

laved for the present all actiou upou tlic bill. T fear that tlii.s delay will 11in«\v the 
bill forward to a very late period in the session. 

••'The introduetion and refereuee of bills are so mueh ''matters of course, " 
in parliamentary proceedings, that 1 am at a loss to account for this action of Mr. 
Washburne. 1 should regret to think tluit his continued opimsition to every meas- 
ure of a public or private nature in which T api)ear to be interested is due to a desire 
to utterly impair my ability to serve my constituents. I can scarcelv think it 
possible that any respectable gentleman would indulge in such an illiberal and 
ungenerous policy, but this fact remains, that he seems determined to resist in 
every way every measure which I deem important to my constituents. I propose 
to do my Avhole duty, in spite of his opposition. Trulv your friend, 

'•'Ignatius Donnelly.*" 

It was cousidered by the Eepublicaus that the States of New 
Hampshire and CouDecticut, holding their election in the spring of 
1868, would have a great inftnence npon the presidential election to 
he held in the fall of that year, and tbey therefore urged the great 
speakers of the party, from all over the country, to come to their help 
in the canvass of those States. A delegation from the Republican 
committees of New Hampshire and Connecticut came to Washing- 
ton and urged Mr. Donnelly (as I have already stated) to make sorae 
speeches for them. This he relucta*utly consented to do. It was 
while engaged in this very important and laborious work in behalf 
of the Republican party that Mr. Washburne, a leader of that party, 
sought the opportunity to destroy his character, by sending for pub- 
lication to Mr. Donnelly's ancient and villainous enemy, the St. 
Paul Press, a letter which Mr. Donnelly fitly characterized, in 
his speech on May 2d, as '^ without a parallel in the history of 
any parliamentary body on the face of the earth ; so shocking, so 
abusive, so outrageous in its character and in all its parts." In 
addition to attacking Mr. Donnelly's course in Congress at every 
possible point, it charged that he ^' had left the city of Phila- 
delphia between two days, under suspicious circumstances." 

On Mr. Donnelly's return to Washington from the State of Con- 
necticut, he was shown by his friends a copy of the Press containing 
this infamous attack. He deliberated for some time whether it was 
not his duty to shoot Washburne. He finally decided to reply to his 
assailant, not in a remote newspaper, but on the floor of Congress. 

The GtKeat Anti- Washburne Speech. 

It was not until the 2d of May, the House being then busy / 
attending the impeachment of the President, Andrew Johnson, that '\ 
he could obtain the floor. On a Saturday afternoon, just as the '. 
House returned from the Senate, he rose in his seat, the galleries 
being nearly empty, and delivered a speech that was in many re- 
spects the greatest and most famous ever made in Congress since 
the estabhshment of the Oovernment. The news spread; the gal- 
leries filled up ; the excitement on the floor of the House became in- 
tense. Washburne had terrorized the House ; he was almost uni- 
versally hated and despised, but at the same time feared; and when 



?4 mOGHAPmCAL. 

one man, and he the quietest gentleman in the House^ rose to 
impale him and flay him alive, the joy of the members knew no 
bounds. They cried out, " Give it to him !" " Hit him again !" and 
the applause and laughter were unbounded. When Mr. Donnelly's 
hour had expired he was about two-thirds through his speech. Hon. 
Wm. D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, the famous '* Pig-iron Kelley " as he 
was called, one of the foremost and ablest men of the House, rose 
and moved that Mr. Donnelly's time be extended tvitlioiit limit , and 
this extraordinary motion was unanimously agreed to ! 

The first part of Mr. Donnelly's speech was devoted to a de- 
fense of bis Congressional acts, and he completely wiped away every 
charge made by Washburne ; he showed that they were disproved 
by the official record of the votes he had given. He then took up 
the personal charges. He said : 

Washburne's Slanders. 

" I left the city of PMladelphia on the 15th of May, 1857, in broad daylight, 
from the depot of the Pennsylvania Central Kailroad, accompanied to that depot by 
crowds of friends. For months befor^ my departure I had advertised in the papers 
of that city that I would leave about the 1st of May, and that all persons having 
claims against me must present them." 

He quoted an advertisement from the Philadelphia Public Ledger 
of May 12, 1857, in which a society of which he was a member unani- 
mously thanked him lor his services, and said that "be bears with 
him to his new home the best wishes of the members of this associa- 
tion for his prosperity and success." 

Mr. Donnelly then bad read the following letter from Hon. 
Benjamin Harris Brewster, tben Attorney- General of the State of 
Pennsylvania, since Attorney -General of the United States — a letter 
of which any man might be justly proud. 

Mr. Brewster's Letter. 

Mr. Donnelly said : 

' * Mk. Speaker : I now send to the clerk's desk and ask him to read a letter — a 
letter from a gentleman well known to many members of this House personally, 
well known, I think, to all of them by reputation, the distinguished Benjamin 
Harris Brewster, of Philadelphia, a man whose learning, genius and character have 
illuminated the profession of the laAv in that State, of wliich he is now Attorney- 
General — the man under whom I studied law, and who knew mefrommy boyhood 
up. I ask the clerk to read what he says in answer to this slanderer." 

The clerk read as follows : 

" Commonwealth of Pen^-sylvania, 
" Office of Attorney-General, 

" Haeeisbfrg, April 28, 1868. 
" My Dear Me. Donnelly: Tour letter of yesterday is now before me. 
It is a surprise to me that any one should be so hardy as to assail your good name 
for acts done while a resident here. 

" To me you have been known for nearly twenty years. You were my stu- 
dent, and from 1849 to 1853 you were daily with me, and down to 1857 there was 
not a week that we were not in constant intercourse. For a year before jou left it 



Mlf. BUEWSTEB'S LETTEJR. 75 

was publiclj' notorious that you woro arrangiufx vour affairs lo go west aud icsido 
there. Your departure was open, public, eoiispicuouslv public. You made a 
formal call on me to bid me good-by. 

" Your character from your boyhood up was well known tome ; your business 
affairs were known to me, as you advised with me, and from other sources my 
means of information were exact, and you were regarded by me, as br others in- 
deed, by all who ever spoke to me of you, as a man of uncommon energy, skill 
and strict integrity. 

"After you had been absemt for some years, and on an occasion when you 
were present in Philadelphia — my recollection is that it was in 1863 — you came to 
me, and, to my surprise, you advised me that some person of the name of Porter 
had charged you with a conspiracy to defraud. As your counsel, the whole matter 
was c(nnmitted to my exclusive charge. The case was heard before the magistrate, 
in my presence, and he discharged you, there being no proof of any kind 
against you. 

•• Mj' recollection is distinct ; there was not the shadow of proof against you. 
The conviction inipressed on my mind then was, and still is, that it was an attempt,' 
under color of criminal proceedings, to frighten you into the payment of a debt 
von did not owe. and that there was also some personal and political ill-feelino- at 
the bottom of the affair. " 

•'In that transaction you acted like a man of courage and high honor. You 
refused to plead the statute of limitations, and you also refused to plead your privi- 
lege as a member of the House of Representatives ; and that refusal was publicly 
announced by me in open court, before the magistrate and all the bystanders. You 
also, being present, announced, through me, that no technical defense of any kind 
would be set up ; that you challenged any one to come forward and make a charge, 
if they had any to make; and, as representing you, I further said that, if no- 
tice were sent to me at any subsequent day, when you were absent, that you would 
forthwith be produced by me, at any time' and from any distance; that you had 
been honored, by a respectable constituency, with a responsible office, and that 
you owed it to their honor and to your own" honor to confront all accusers at all 
times and meet all such charges on their merits. 

" For my part, to me you have ever been dear as a friend and a pupil of whom 
I am proud. 

" You are known by me to enjoy a character for stern integrity, and by me 
you would be trusted to the utmost limit of human confidence. 

" Truly, as ever, more and more, your friend, 

"Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
'•Hon. I. Donnelly, House of Beprese7itatives, Washington, D. C." 

Continuing, Mr. Donnelly said : 

"The gentleman's brother [W. D. Washburn], four years ago, contesting 
with me the right to a seat in this House, used these slanders upon the streets of 
St. Paul, until I was forced to come out, in a card in the public papers of the State, 
and say that, if he could prove anything against my honor, I would withdraw from 
the contest for Congress, and resign my seat in this "body. I had thought, knowing 
the source from which these things spring, that that denial would have ended the 
matter. 

" I shall not stop to amplify that splendid passage from Shakespeare which my 
friend from Iowa [Mr. Price] was compelled the other day to quote against the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Washburne] : 

" Who steals my purse steals trash ; ' tis something, nothing; 
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; 
But he that filches from me raj good name 
Robs me of that which naught enriches him, 
And makes xae poor indeed." 

" Why, Mr. Speaker, the cringing sneak-thief who picks your pocket, or steals 
your overcoat, is a Christian gentleman compared with that monster who would 
rob you of the precious mantle of your reputation and leave you shivering before 
the contempt of the world. The assassin who strikes you down in your blood 



TT) BTOGBAVmCAL. 

l(?aves at least your toeuiorysacrcl ammvij: iiDen, and }'our grave may be bedeAved hy 
the tears of affection; but ho who wouhl assassinate your reputation, he who 
would strike at the life of your character, he who would befoul you, who would 
cover you all over with night-soil, is a Avretch whom ' it were base flattery to call a 
coward.' Beside such a man the memory of the assassin Booth grows respectable.' 

Caerying the War into Africa. 

Having closed the defense of himself^ Mr. Donnelly then " car- 
ried the war into Africa." He attacked Washburne in a terrible 
philippic, winding up with this summary : 

" What great measure, in his sixteen years of legislation, has this gentleman 
ever originatexl 1 What liberal measure has ever met with his support 1 What 
(uiginal sentiment has he ever uttered? What thought of his has ever risen 
above the dead-level of the dreariest platitudes ? If he lay dead to-momnv in this 
chamber, what heartin this body would experieiice one sincere j^cuiff of sorrow ? . . . 
He has soiight to build himself up upon our dishonor ; to glorify himself in our 
disgrace; to pollute and befoul and traduce the very body of which he is a mem- 
ber." 

In the following pages several extracts are given of this great 
speech. It was widely copied all over the United States;' it was re- 
printed in English boolis and in the Paris newspapers. It created 
an immense sensation throughout the whole country. It ^practically 
ended EUhu Washburne as a public man. He desired to be a mem- 
ber of Grant's cabinet, and Grant permitted him to serve as Secre- 
tary of State for two or three days, and then exiled the ambitious 
Warwick to France. 

The Effect of the Speech. 

The Washington correspondent of the Chicago Times ex- 
pressed the general feehng when he said : 

" Donnelly has completely wiped out Washburne as a radical leader." 
The New York Herald spoke of — 

" The vein of genius, . . . the thunderbolts of powerful invective and genu- 
ine wit amid the storm and flood of Billingsgate." 

The Philadelphia Telegraph said : 

" While Mr. Donnelly's language is almost inexcusable, yet his provocation 
was great. The statements made by Mr. Washburne as to his character are utterly 
and entirely false. " 

Mr. Donnelly was told when he lectured, years afterward, in 
Madison, Wisconsin, during the session of the legislature which 
had just refused to elect Cadwalader C. Washburn to the United 
States Senate, that his great speech had been republished in nearly 
all the Wisconsin papers, during the recent campaign, and that it 
had materially contributed to C. C. Washburn's defeat. 
Mr. Do:n^nelly's Ovation. 

But to resume our narrative. Mr-. Donnelly was boarding at the 
time at the St. James Hotel, and that night and all of the next day 
(Sunday) he was the subject of a perfect ovation. He was called 
upon by hundreds of leading men, including a great many Congress- 



MR. DONNELLY J)EMANDS AN INVESTIGATION. 11 

men. ' The entire delegation from Illinois (with the exception of 
Washburne) called in a body, with United States Senator Richard 
Yates, the great war Governor of Illinois, at their head ; and, com- 
ing up to him, laughing, and holding out his hand, Senator Yates 
said : " Of course you can not expect us to rejoice in your castiga- 
tion of our colleague ! " The officials of the House called also, 
in a body, and said they intended to take up a collection and pre- 
sent Mr. Donnelly with a service of plate. ]\Ir. Donnelly begged 
them not to do so ; not that he would not highly appreciate such a 
gift, but that he knew Washburne's vindictive nature, and that he 
would follow them up, and persecute them, individually, for the rest 
of their lives. 

As I said before, the affair ended Washburne's political career. 
After his return from Paris he sought to be elected again to the 
House, but could not succeed. Then he tried to be United States 
Senator, and had but a small support. Then he even aspired to the 
nomination for President, and received two or three votes. He will 
be remembered in history only by Mr. Donnelly's philippic. Mr. 
Donnelly said at the time : "I have embalmed him for posterity — 
like a bug in amber. " 

Me. Donnelly Demands an Investigation. 

Mr. Donnelly demanded a committee of investigation to inquire 
into the truth of Washburne's charges. He was determined to give 
Washburne a chance to prove his shmders, if he could. Mr. Win- 
dom, his colleague, made the motion at his request, and the com- 
mittee was appointed. The committee met May 15th. Mr. Wash- 
burne had been invited by the chairman to be present and prove 
his charges. He did not attend. In the meantime he had the clerk 
of his standing committee busy in Philadelphia, seeking for any possi- 
ble shadow of evidence to sustain his slander. The committee met 
again May 16th. Mr. Washburne appeared, and stated that his let- 
ter to the St. Paul Press did not contain amj charges of crime or cor- 
ruption against Mr. Bonnelhj ! Then he sought to intimidate the 
committee, by declaring that he wanted " fifty or more witnesses " 
— not from Philadelphia, but from Minnesota, while none of Mr. 
Donnelly's pretended ottenses had been committed in Minnesota. 
Then, at his request, the committee adjourned over, for about ten 
days, to enable his clerk to finish his researches in Philadelphia. 

A telegram to the Chicago Republican of May 28th says: 

"Mr. Washburne made a sad mistake when he attacked the Minnesotian, and 
is now put to his trumps to find any evidence whatever to support his charges. He 
will probably have to back out as best he can.'' 

Then, on the 27th of May, 1868, Washburne wrote a letter to 
the committee from which I make these choice extracts : 

'• After extraordinary provocations, unknown to the committee or to the House 
of Representatives, and extending through a series of years, 1 wrote the letter which 
has been made the subject of investigation." 



78 BIOGMAPHICAL. 

Mr. Donnelly stated to the committee that this allegation was an 
absolute and abominable falsehood : that he had never given Wash- 
burn the slightest provocation for his course ; and he challenged him 
to name a single instance of the kind'. 

Washburne Backs Down. 

Washburne goes on to say in his letter : 

"In the letter there is no charge touching the gentleman's oflS.cial character as 
a member of the House ; and no allegation of bribery and corruption as stated in 
the preamble." 

And this in the face of the fact that he had in that letter 
charged Mr. Donnelly with having been " seen" — that is, bribed, — 
upon the vote on the bill to legalize a bridge across the Mississippi 
at Clinton. 

The committee in their report say : 

" On behalf of Mr. Washburne it was claimed that the charges or statements 
in the letter, having reference to the conduct and character of Mr. Donnelly, an- 
terior to his election to Congress, were no breach of the privileges of the House or 
of Mr. Donnelly as a member, and that therefore the House had no proper juris- 
diction to direct an investigation as to their truth or falsity." 

Mr. Washburne was in this dilemma : He had made charges 
which he could not prove; which he knew were unjust to a fellow 
member, and false; but, instead of coming forward, and, in a manly 
way, making a proper retraction and apology, he withdraws alto- 
gether so much of the charges which affected Mr. Donnelly's char- 
acter as a member of the House, and which the House would com- 
pel him to prove or retract, and then he urges that, as to the other 
charges, the House has no right to investigate them, because they 
referred to events which transpired before Mr. Donnelly's election 
to Congress. 

Washbuene's Baseness. 

It is difQcult to conceive of greater baseness. To make terri- 
ble charges against a gentleman, and then refuse to attempt to 
prove them, and argue that the assailed party could not be per- 
mitted to disprove them himself! The committee say : 

" Mr., Washburne, in his written communication before, referred to, and also 
verbally before the committee, stated that he did not appear before the committee 
as a prosecutor, and declined to assume the affirmative of attempting to sub- 
stantiate his charge against Mr. Donnelly by proof. " 

The committee further say: 

" Mr. Donnelly constantly and persistently urged upon the committee that 
they should proceed to investigate the truth or falsity of the' allegations against 
him, and avowed his entire willingness to assume the affirmative, and to disprove 
them, and to pay the expenses of witnesses for that purpose. " 

But the committee were constrained to follow the parliamentary 
rule, and took the ground in their report that they had no right to 
inquire into the acts of members prior to their election. But the 



THE EFFECT IN MINNESOTA. 79 

whole matter leaves Washburne in the most shameful and degraded 
light for the contemplation of posterity. He interfered, without 
provocation, discourteously in the business of another member, and 
then, when that member, obliged to explain the cause of the delay 
in introducing the bill to those interested, stated the facts without 
abuse or denunciation, he enters his district and, in the leading- 
paper of the State, covers him with charges of corruption and crime; 
and then, when an investigation is ordered into the truth of his 
charges, he withdraws so much as he would be compelled, by par- 
liamentary law, to prove, and interposes an objection to the assailed 
party proving his innocence, at his own expense, of the remainder 
of his base slanders. 

The Effect in Minnesota. 

Of course, all this battle produced an immense sensation in Min- 
nesota. The papers were filed with it, pro and con, for weeks. An 
attempt was made, by preliminary telegrams, to represent that the 
speech made by Mr. Donnelly was exceedingly vulgar and profane; 
but the speech soon circulated and was read by everybody, and this 
charge fell to the ground. 

Mr. Donnelly's Return Home. 

On Mr. Donnelly's return to the State he spoke to an immense 
meeting in Ingersoll's Hall, then the largest hall in the city. The 
speech was long remembered. He attacked his enemies with elo- 
quence, ridicule and facts. 

The Democratic paper, the St. Paul Pioneer, of Aug. 2, 1868, 
said : 

" The reading of these extracts presented the richest scene, we presume to say. 
ever witnessed by any person in St. Paul ; and the audience laughed and laughed 
and laughed, till old men and young men were compelled to wipe the tears from 
their eyes. Such yelping and shouting and slapping each other on the back as was 
witnessed there last night has seldom been seen. . . . During all this portion 
of Mr. Donnelly's speech his remarks were interrupted continually by cheering, clap- 
ping of hands, laughter and eveiy conceivable indication of satisfaction. There is 
no possible way to present the scene to our readers ; the speaker's points, during 
the whole of these last remarks, -wqyq so sharp, so pointed and so perfectly ludi- 
crous. " 

The St. Paul Dispatch of Aug. 2d said : 

" The scene witnessed in Ingersoll's Hall Saturday night was unparalleled in 
the history of the State. It was a spontaneous outpouring and outbursting of the 
people to do honor to a faithful public servant and show disapproval of the malic- 
ious opposition to him. . . . From his entrance into the hall until his exit, un- 
bounded approbation was manifested toward him. His appearance upon the stage 
called forth a greeting such as was never before tendered a public speaker in this 
city. For five minutes the very building shook with applause. Cheer after cheer 
pealed forth, hundreds rose to their feet, hats were to.?sed high in the air, and the 
most indescribable enthusiasm prevailed. " 

In thi-^ speech, not content with the evidence he had furnished 
as to his private character in his reply to Washburne, Governor 



80 BIOGBAFHICAL. 

Donnelly i3roduced receipts, or sworn certificates, from a dozen par- 
ties, showing that, before leaving Philadelphia, he had settled up all 
his accounts in the most honorable manner. 

Defeated for Congress. 
We have very little heart to follow this narrative of events 
farther. By a series of high-handed measures that would have dis- 
graced the South during the carpet-bag days, Mr. Donnelly's ene- 
mies, plentifully supplied with money by the wealthy and desi^otic 
aristocracy of the district, who are believed to have spent $50,000 
in the fight, defeated him and elected the Hon. Eugene Wilson, 
a Democrat, from a district which, two years before, had given over 
4,000 majority. To do this, men took possession of the hall where 
the Congressional convention was to be held, placed armed police- 
men on the stairs, to keep out the delegates favorable to Mr. Don- 
nelly, split the Kepublican party in two, nominated General Hub- 
bard as their candidate against Mr. Donnelly, and when General 
Hubbard withdrew, apparently secured a man named Andrews, 
with the use of $7,000, in some peculiar manner, and the prospect of 
a ministership abroad, to run as candidate, and draw off enough 
Eepublican votes to give the district to a Democrat. Andrews was 
appointed Minister to Stockholm, by E. B. Washburne, during his 
three or four days' incumbency of the Secretary of State's office, as 
a reward for defeating Donnelly and sending a Democrat to Con- 
gress from a Kepublican district. 

The Senatorial Battle of 1869. 
Senator Ramsey (the same man who had made the Indian 
treaties to which I referred in the early pages of this biography) 
had been one of the chief factors in the battle against Governor 
Donnelly, simply because he feared that if the latter was not killed 
off he might become a candidate for Senator. In the Legislature 
which was to elect a United States Senator, and which met in January, 
1869, succeeding Governor Donnelly's defeat, a large majority of 
the members-elect were opposed to Ramsey. But Ramsey's strikers 
had shown a number of them the usual potent arguments used in 
such contests and converted them. In Wabasha County the three 
delegates had been instructed to vote against Ramsey, but he 
managed to procure two out of the three. One of them was known 

ever afterward by the name of " Seed- wheat ," because, 

when seen coming out of Ramsey's headquarters, in the midst of 
the fight, at a suspicious hour, he said he had been in there to see 
a man " who had some seed- wheat for sale ! " Another member of 
the delegation had received, it was alleged, $3,000 ; he was in poor 
health, and the exposure which follo^yed was so crushing that he 
died soon after the session closed. Governor Donnelly's friends 
were supporting him for United States Senator, against Ramsey, 
but when he saw how his men were being captured he withdrew 



AN AMUSING NAUEATIVE. 81 

from the oontest. He had neither the money nor the incHnation tfo 
make such a fight. 

An Amusing Naerative. 
But there were others who were not wilHug to see the Ramsey 
party sail oft" with the prize without a battle. Tliey beheved that 
it was legitimate to " fight the devil with fire." A bold man, with 
])lenty of money, who was supporting another candidate, took man 
after man aside, and a conversation something like this followed ; 

1. " You came here opposed to Eamsey." 

2. "Yes." 

1. " You have been paid by his friends .$3,000 to support him." 

2. " Sir ! Do you mean to insult me " 

1. '' Tut, tut; let's talk business. Now, wouldn't you like to 
make $2,000 more, if vou can do so without being found out? " 

2. "Howf " 

1. " The vote in the caucus is to be by ballot. If we furnish 
you with a ballot that will look exactly like the Ramsey ballot, but 
will contain another name, and you vote it, and the party we repre- 
sent is elected, I will guarantee you $2,000 more. You will then 
have $5,000 instead of $3,000, and you can swear by all the gods 
that you voted for Ramsey, and no one can ever show that you did 
not. Others will vote the same way, and our man will be elected." 

And so a bargain was struck, and so the ingenious manipulator 
of men passed from member to member until he had about secured 
all the men w^ho had been bought by the adherents of the other 
side. 

Diamond Cut Diamond. 

Now, the editor of the opposition paper to Ramsey, Mr. H., a 
very shrewd, energetic gentleman, had in his employ a young 
printer who had a brother working in the Press office. And Mr. 
H. said to his emplo^'e: '^ if you will procure for me one of the 
tickets printed in the Press office for the Senatorial caucus to- 
morrow night — Ramsey's tickets — I will give you $10 for it. " And 
thereupon that young man hied him to his brother in the Press 
office, and repeated the offer made him. 

But the publisher of the Press, Fred. Driscoll, who had as 
much honesty as a rat, and a good deal more cunning than a fox, 
knew" that a certain ]3rinter working for him had a brother in the 
office of the rival paper, and he anticipated the tactics of the enemy, 
and so he said to his young man : " Print me five hundred tickets on 
white paper, after this form : 



FOR UNITED STATES SEXATOE, 

ALEXANDER RAMSEY. 



And print them at once." And that young man thought fortune 

6 



82 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

was pouriug her favors iuto his lap; and he printed the tickets, and 
an extra one for Mr. H., and in a little while his brother had the 
$10 and Mr. H. was happy. 

But at the dead hour of midnight, " when graveyards yawn 
and graves give up their dead," the foxy Mr. Driscoll goes to his 
office, and in a little room, all by himself, he himself prints off five 
hundred tickets for the caucus the next night, on stiff, red paste- 
hoard! 

The Ked Pasteboaed. 

The next day, about noon, a thunder-clap fell out of a clear 
sky when the jubilant Mr. H. saw for the first time, one of the real 
senatorial tickets. He grabbed his hat and rushed to the nearest 
'stationery store. 

" Have you any red pasteboard like this? " 

'' I regret to say that Mr. Driscoll called yesterday and bought 
every scrap of it we had." 

Consternation ! 

Mr. H. darted off to the next store. 

The same question, the same answer. 

The next store. 

The same question, the same answer. 

That Irish fox, Fred. Driscoll, had bought every piece of red paste - 
J)oardfor sale in the city! 

Brother H. tore his hair. 

But a bright thought struck him. David Ramaley had been in 
the job-printing business for a long time. He might have some of 
the coveted article among his old stock. A diligent search revealed 
the treasure I 

In a little while there were a lot of stiff, red pasteboard tickets 
in the pockets of certain honest men, of the same size, sbape and 
color as the Ramsey ticket, but without Ramsey's name on them. 

All but one of the virtuous men had them. He, in the hurry, 
had been furnished by somebody with a ^' sticker," with the otlier 
candidate's name on it, to paste over the name of the Indian treaty- 
maker; but he was so closely watched, properly enough, by the fel- 
lows who had bought him, that he got no chance to paste it on until 
he found himself in the caucus; and then he tried to stick it on by 
wetting his thumb and applying it to the ticket in his pants 
pocket! But he made such clumsy work of it that the sticker came 
pff, and was found by the tellers, rolled up in a pellet, in the hat. 

Those who were present have said that it was one of. the most 
amusing sights in the world to see Driscoll, checking off the red 
tickets, with a complacent smile on his face, as they were dropped, 
face downward, in the teller's hat, and then to see the same Driscoll 
with his eves " hanging out of his head " when the red tickets 
came out of the hat, face uppermost, with another man's name on 
them ! 



IN FBIVATE LIFE. 83 

Ramsey was nominated by one majority witliout counting the 
" sticker." If the opposition had had the sense to insist that that 
also was a ballot, as it was, there would have been a " tie ; " and if 
tliere had been Ramsey would^»liave been re-elected to the Senate, 
for several men had been forced into voting for him under the belief 
that he had a " sure thing " without them. 

In Private Life. 

Ever since that year, 1868 — twenty-three years ago — Governor 
Donnelly has lived upon his farm in private life, except during his 
service in the State Legislature. From 1874 to 1878, inclusive — five 
years- — he was an independent member of the State Senate, from 
Dakota County — the county where he had settled in 1856. In 1886 
he was elected by the Alliance, for two years, to the House of Rep- 
resentatives of the State, and in 1890 he was elected again, by the 
Alliance party, to the State Senate, of which he is now a member. 

His Politics. 

It has been charged all over the United States that Governor 
Donnelly has been, politically, " everything by turns and nothing 
long; " that he has been, " in the course of one revolving moon," 
Democrat, Republican, Anti-Monopolist and Greenbacker. 

This is false. After his defeat for Congress, in 1868, he contin- 
ued to act with the Republican party until 1870. In that year, with- 
out any solicitation on his part, he was reciuested, in petitions, signed 
by 3,500 Re[)ublicans, to run for Congress, on a low-tariff platform, 
as an independent Republican. And on September 15, 1870, the ' 
Democratic district convention met and resolved not to put a Demo- ^ 
cratic candidate in the field, but to support Mr. Donnelly " as an 
iiulependent candidate for Congress." This surely did not make 
him a Democrat. In 1872 he supported Horace Greeley for Presi- 
dent, as against Ulysses Grant, whose administration had been be- 
fouled with whisky-rings and corruptions of all kinds. With thou- 
sands of others he suppoi'ted Greeley as a Libei'al Republican. In I 
1874 he started " The Anti-AIonopoiy Party of Minnesota," and on i 
July 16th of that year he established the Anti -Monopolist news- j 
paper to advocate and defend it ^ 

From that hour to this he has remained an Anti-Monopolist. 
As such he cooperated with the advocates of the remonetization of 
silver and the defenders of the greenback currency, which the 
national banks sought to destroy. As an Anti-Monopolist he is now 
a member of the IVople's Party. The doctrine which the People's 
Party is now advocating he has been preaching, on the stump and 
in the press, for twenty years past. He may justly claim to have 
been the father of tlie whole independent movement in the United 
States. The following pages of this work will show how early he 
advocated its distinctive principles. In defense of these principles 



84 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

he has made a dozen campaigns, and led a half-dozen " forlorn 
hopes;" sometimes his independent forces formed temporary alli- 
ances with the minority party, the Democracy, and at other times, 
in local matters, the Eepublicans supported them ; and at still other 
times they fought both the old parties, with the leaders united by 
"the cohesive power of public plunder." Sometimes they were 
successful, and many times they were defeated. But after every 
defeat Mr. Donnelly rose, with indomitable resolution, and renewed 
the battle for popular rights. 

The Anti-Monopolist. 

On the 16th day of July, 1874, he published the first number of 
his weekly newspaper, The Anti-Monopolist ^ in the city of St. 
Paul, Minnesota. He chose for the motto of his paper the text of 
Scripture : 

" Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward. " 

The whole purpose of the paper was to educate the people in 
what he believed to be the truth. His great drawback, from the 
first, was lack of capital. He had not the means to employ a suffi- 
cient force to help him. He had to write the editorials, keep the 
books, collect the subscriptions, look after the advertisements, read 
the proofs, and for a time mail the paper to the subscribers. And all 
this while he was managing a farm of about 1,500 acres, and traveling 
backward and forward from St. Paul to Donnelly, in Stevens County, 
and from Donnelly to his home at Mninger, occasionally rushing 
ott" to make speeches at ]mblic meetings, county fairs and i)olitical 
conventions. And yet, despite all this, he managed to make one 
of the liveliest, most readable and best-edited papers ever published 
in the United States. 

As soon as the first number appeared his swarming opponents 
assailed him like a cloud of hornets; but they did not know what 
they were undertaking. It was one thing to attack Governor Don- 
nelly without a single newspaper in the State that would defend 
him, and quite another to assail him with his own newspaper to re- 
ply through. He opened a column of " Eecalcitrations,^^ ov " licl- 
ings-hacktvard, " in which he answered his enemies in short, pithy, 
pointed articles, that stung like the sting of a wasp. Very few 
showed any desire to assail him the second time, and after a while 
he was forced to complain that he would have to abandon his " Be- 
calcitrations^^ for lack of opponents to recalcitrate upon. In the 
following pages some extracts are given from these retorts. 

The Poweh of the Anti-Monopolist. 

\ The Anti- Monopolist wielded a large influence in the State and 

I possessed an extensive circulation. At one time its subscription li-t 

I ran up to 17,000, a very large one for a new and small State. In 

the fall of 1878 Mr. Donnelly found his labors greater than he could 



MB. DONNELLY'S LEGISLATTVE CAUEEB. s., 

jxu'form, aud he sold it out, but it did not live loug after lie with- 
drew IVou] it. It contributed very materially to lay the foundation 
in men's miud.s of the strong public sentiment on which the People's 
Party rests to-day iu Minnesota. 

Mr. Donnelly's Legislative Career. 

In his career as State Senator aud member of the House of Rep- 
resentatives of the State of ]\Iinnesota, Governor Donnelly showed 
the same disposition to work for the good of the oppressed and the 
inifortunate which had been so inarked in his course in Congress. 
Me championed every measure which tended to improve the condi- 
tion of the people, regardless of the abuse and persecution of the 
men whose robberies he was interfering with. 

Cheap School Books. 

One of the questions to which Mr. Donnelly addressed himself, 
as a member of the ^tate Senate, was that of the text-books used in 
the public schools. The Governor of the State, Governor Austin, 
iu his message addressed to the Legislature, in 1874, thus referred 
to the subject : 

"It is estimated by those most thoroughly informed that the people of the 
State haA'e paid the past year $250,000 for school books used in the public schools, 
aud that the amount thus expended increases at the rate of ten per cent, per 
annum, that being the supposed increase of our population in the future. lam 
informed that the average i)rofit of the publisher, as he wholesales to the jobber 
and retail dealer, is about one hundred per cent.; that the original cost of the read- 
ers that are sold to us at one dollar each is but fifty cents, and of a speller, small 
arithmetic or geography, for which we pay twenty five cents, is but ten cents. 
Thus it Avill be seen that the first cost of the books for which our people have paid 
$250,000 during the year was but $125,000, and that we should have saved, had 
they been supplied to us at cost, an annual tax of $125,000. 

'' 1 apprehend there is no good reason to suppose that we shall receive any 
better terms iu the future than the past, without a radical change of policy. The 
I)rices are irrevocably fixed by a convention of the craft, and it matters not whether 
the publishers are few or many, the cost to the people is the same. ' Where com- 
bination is possible, competition is impossible.'" 

Governor Donnelly's own experience confirmed these views of 
the Governor of the State. He knew that the evil com])lained of 
was a great one. It was not only the increased price of the books, 
but many of the county superintendents of schools were in the habit 
of combining with the publishers and receiving a large commission 
on all sales made in their county. The result was that every few 
months the books were changed, and those which the scholars had 
been using were thrown aside, and the parents had to buy complete 
sets of new ones. This became an onerous burden on the poor, and 
as a result children were in many instances kept away from 
school and grew up in ignorance, because their parents were unable, 
out of their small earnings, to purchase the necessary text-books. 



8G BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Effoets to Stop a Eobbert. 

AVith Mr. Donnelly, to hear of an abuse \Yas to move for its cor- 
rection, and so he set "to work to reUeve his beloved popular educa- 
tion of this heavy burden. He first proposed that the State should 
employ scholars to prepare arithmetics, grammars, etc., and set the 
boys in the Eeform School to learn printing and print them; and 
then furnish the books to the people fiee or at cost. But to this 
scheme the frieuds of the Book Ring made a hundred objections. It 
was impossible ; men could not be found learned enough to prepare 
a spelling-book, etc. The struggle lasted through two or three 
years. Twice Mr. Donnelly secured the passage of a bill through 
the Senate, of which he was a member, only to have it defeated in 
the House. At last, in 1877, a bookseller of St. Paul, Mr. D. D. Mer- 
rill, came forward and offered to furnish the necessary text-books 
for one-half the then prices, to furnish equally good books of the 
same sizes and cpiality, if the State would make a contract with him 
that he should have the furnishing of all the books used in the State 
for fifteen years. Such a law was passed, and it stated, in the very 
law itself, that the book that had cost 20 cents should be furnished 
by Mr. Merrill for 10 cents, the book that had cost 45 cents should 
be had for 20 cents, the book that had cost 90 cents should be 
furnished for 40 cents, etc. And a contract was entered into 
with Mr. Merrill that he should furnish his books at these prices 
for fifteen years. The School-book Ring of the United States had 
entered into a combination to control the book trade of the whole 
country, and had given bonds to each other not to cheapen prices; 
but the Minnesota legislation broke the back of the ring, and the 
next year the prices of school books fell all over the United States. 
The number of scholars entitled to apportionment in 1878 was 157,- 
476; in 1890 the number was 221,186. If we will average this for 
the fifteen years during which the law has stood, we will have 189,- 
331 scholars per year. According to Governor Austin's estimate, 
the book ring took from the people each year $125,000. If we will 
multiply this by 15, for the fifteen years of the contract, then 
the sa\ing to the State has been $1,875,000 — that is to say, there 
are $l,87o,000 left in the pockets of the people of Minnesota that 
would not have been there but for the passage of this act; and this- 
on the basis of the number of scholars seventeen years ago. But as 
the text-book act reduced the cost of the books one-half, and as 
there have been an average of 189,331 scholars during the life of the 
contract, we have but to call the saving to each scholar $1.00 per 
year (a very moderate estimate), and the text-book act has saved 
the people of Minnesota the great sum of $2,839,965 in fifteen years. 
In other words, the State is that much better off from Governor Don- 
nelly having lived in it. 

This is practical statesmanship. But it was not accomplished 
except after a dreadful fight. The Book Ring of the United States 



THE INDIGNATION OF AN HONEST MAN, 87 

sent imscriipulous a,<;(Mits, witli ])l(inty of money, to St. Paul, to kill 
the incasuro. The Ibllowin.i^' aimisinLi story is told, as happeniug 
at one stage of the contest : 

The Ixdigxation of an Honest Man. 

A necessary amendment to the act was pending in the House. 
The Lljok King had bought just enough votes to kill the bill. To 
kill that amendment Avas practically to kill the whole reform. Their 
representative stood in the lobby, checking oil" the names of mem- 
bers as they voted. Just at this point a 'member who had not yet 
voted, and was about to vote against the bill, turned to his neigh- 
bor, and said, in a whisper : 

" How much did you get for your vote ? " 

'' Twenty-five hundred dollars, " was the reply, also in a whisper. 

" You did ? " said the first party. " Why, I only got $500. " 

*' Oh, " said the other, " there is no use of lying to me ; you got 
$'2,500. I was in the headquarters of the King and saw the list of 
names, and got $2,500 for you. " 

" He did ? " said the first member, thoroughly aroused. " Why, 

that d d rascal has pocketed $2,000, and given me but $500. 

ril show tJ/e ring that I cfinH be bought in that ivaijl " 

And when his name was called he voted for the bill and it was 
carried, by one vote! \\y. Donnelly was in the hall of the House 
at the time, and he saw, by the consternation of the Ring, that some- 
thing unexpected had happened; and so he got the "clerk of the 
House to return the bill to the Senate at once ; "and he had the Sen- 
ate act upon it at once, and he hurried it instantly to the Governor, 
who was ready to sign it. In a few minutes the agent of the Ring had 
" fixed" things to the satisfaction of the indignant member ; it was 
moved to reconsider the vote by which the bill had passed ; and the 
House requested the Senate to return the bill ; and the Senate polite- 
ly informed the House that the bill was in the hands of the Gov- 
ernor and refused to recall it. And so this one man's honest (!) in- 
dignation has saved Minnesota $2,839,965, 

The Usuey Question. 

Another subject very dear to Mr. Donnelly's heart is the protec- 
tion of the people from excessive rates of interest and usurious 
practices. Ho argues, in Ccesafs Column^ that interest on money 
should be abolished altogether. He holds, with the early Christian 
church, that, as an abstract proposition, it is a crime for " money to 
breed money." 

When he was elected to the State Senate in 1874, the rate of 
interest was twelve "per cent, 'per annum — and there was, practically, 
no law asjainst usury — but borrowers paid twenty, fifty, one hundred, 
two hundred per cent, per annum. He fought for five years, until he 
secure;! the passage of an act which declared the forfeiture of princi- 



88 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

pal aud interest whenever more than the legal rate of interest was 
taken. The Supreme Court of the State, for a time, ruled against tbo 
law, in such a way as to make it practically inoperative ; but latterly 
their decisions have been on the side of the people, and the law is 
having an excellent effect in preventing usury. Last winter there 
was a terrible battle to repeal the forfeiture clause, and but for the 
help of the Alliances, who nobly sustained Mr. Donnelly by hundreds 
of petitions, the money-lenders would have succeeded. As it is, 
the great fight then made has brought the knowledge of the for- 
feiture clause home to the#farmers, and the result is, in many parts 
of the State, that usury has substantially ceased. The bankers, how- 
ever, have been able to prevent the reduction of the rate of interest 
from ten per cent, (at which it was fixed in 1879) to eight per cent ; 
but the Alliance hopes to accomplish this reform at the next ses- 
sion of the Legislature. It is impossible to estimate the number of 
millions of dollars taken from the producing classes of Minnesota by 
usury, or to tell of the thousands of families that have been 
reduced to poverty by this means. 

An Age of Corruption. 

It is no wonder that Governor Donnelly wrote Ccesar^s Column. 
His convictions as to the future, expressed in that book, were forced 
home upon him by his knowledge of the conditions of Minnesota 
politics. We cannot convey to the reader in other lands any con- 
ception of the bottomless abyss of corruption in which the affairs of 
this State have frJlen during the last twenty-five years. 

The admissions and charges of the leading newspapers of th:) 
State throw some light on this dreadful condition of affairs. 

The St. Paul Press, the leading Eepublican paper of Minnesota 
made in 1871 the following charge against the St. Paul Pioneer, 
the leading Democratic paper of the State : 

" And tlio Press begs to express the further opinion that it can very well afford, 
the resuscitation of the stale and exploded falsehood that it was ever brought to 
support the claims of political candidates, l)^ the publisher of a journal Avho, last 
fall and winter, exacted and obtained from a notorious Republican corruptionist a 
bribe of twenty thousand dollars, on the condition that it should not support the 
claims of Mr. Donnelly, the Democratic candidate for Congress." 

And I find the St. Paul Dispatch of July 21, 1871, referring to 
the fact that the St. Paul Press (the Kepublican organ) had con- 
fessed that it blackmailed the Northern Pacific Railroad's construc- 
tion company out of $30,000, as the price of its support of Hon. Wm. 
Windom for United States Senator. 

The most amusing part of this quarrel (if anything so terrible 
can be amusing) between the editor of the St. Paul Press, Mr. 
Joseph A. Wheelock, and the editor of the Democratic sheet, 
the St. Paul Pioneer, Mr. Henry L. Carver, is that Carver defied 
Wheelock to show that he. Carver, had been paid $20,000 as a 
bribe to help the Republican candidate and defeat Mr. Donnelly, 



, H. L. GOnnOX A XI) THE .^.VtO. 89 

who bad tlu.' iiidorjsonicnt of llic Democratic parly; Carver well 
knowing- that Wheelock could not sul)si;intiale his charge with- 
out rendering the Kepublican Congressman-elect, who was said to 
have paid the money, liable to expulsion from his seat for bribery. 
And thereupon Wheelock replied that if Carver would agree to the 
appointment oi referees, who would report their conclusions, hut not 
the evidence, he would go before the referees and prove the truth of 
his charge! It is laughable to read the debate betv>^een these polit- 
ical prostitutes, and the efifort to blacken each other without giving 
away party secrets to the people. But two such kindred institutions 
as the Press and Pioneer could not be long kept apart, and the re- 
sult was they were eventually merged into one and became the Pio- 
neer-Press, which to-day holds up, in splendid shape, the reputation 
of both the original contracting parties. 

H. L. GOEDOX AND THE $500. 

I have heard Mr. Donnelly tell of the first appearance of cor- 
ruption in the politics of the State. — for all these terrible conditions 
have been of recent growth. 

It was, I think, in 186J:; Mr. Donnelly was a candidate for re- 
election to Congress ; and the convention was in his favor. Among 
the delegates was the Hon. H. L. Gordon, a young man, a lawyer of 
ability and a man of honorable instincts, besides being a gallant sol- 
dier. Mr. Gordon represented, with three or four others, the county 
of Wright in that convention, and was an ardent friend and suppor- 
ter of Governor Donnelly, as he is to this day. • 

It seems that two very prominent Republicans, one from Henne- 
pin County, and the other from 8t. Paul, came to Mr. Gordon, and 
one of them said : 

" See here, Gordon, can you conceive of anything that would 
iiKluce you to oppose Donnelly ? " 

"dh, yes, " said the wily young man, "I can conceive of a 
great many things that would have that effect." 

"Gordon," said his visitor, "will the rest of your delegation 
vote as you do ? " 

" I have no doubt they will, " replied Gordon. 

" Gordon, would you like to have five hundred dollars?" 

" I never saw the time yet," replied Gordon, " that I would not 
like to have five hundred dollars." 

And thereupon they handed him that sum. 

This was just before the convention assembled. Gordon, a few 
moments later, rushed up to Governor Donnelly. 

" Have you a revolver f" he asked. 

" No; what do you want with a revolver?" 

" See here," he said, pulling out a great wad of greenbacks, " I 
have been paid $500 to sell you out. If you are nominated, I shall 
say nothing; but, if you are defeated, I shall rise in the hall and 
show this money, and there will be a free fight." 



90 mOGnAPHICAL. 

And with this he rushed down the street to a mim-shop. 

Fortunately, Governor Donnelly was noniiuated on the lii-st bal- 
lot, and the " free fight " did not come off. The next day Gordon sent 
the $500 to good old Doctor Foster, chairman of the Eepublican 
district committee, with a note in which he said the money had been 
handed him by two prominent Repubhcans, without any instructions 
as to its use, and he desired that the committee should use it to help 
the re-election of that gallant representative, etc., Governor Don- 
nelly. Doctor Foster published the letter, but subsequently, at 
Governor D.'s suggestion, returned the money to the humiUated 
men who had given it to Gordon. 

This was the first blossoming of the upas tree which has since 
covered Minnesota with its deadly growth. But it was as nothing 
to what has followed. 

A CoKDUROT Railway. 

Bill King and eleven associates got a contract about that time, 
for political considerations, to build the Northern Pacific Railroad 
from Lake Superior to the Mississippi River, about 150 miles, and 
they made $1,200,000, or $100,000 each, out of it! The road ran 
through a swampy country, and they built it by laying down logs 
and brushwood on the swamp and placing the track on top of it, and 
in several places the road soon after sank down into the bottomless 
marsh and had to be rebuilt by driving piles, at great cost to the 
plundered company. And this is the construction company which 
the Dispatch says was blackmailed by the editors of the Press. 

"Bill King." 

The master-spirit of this terrible epoch was William S. King, 
of Minneapolis, called " Colonel " King, although he had never been 
in the armv or smelted gunpowder, but he had been postmaster of 
the House of Representatives at Washington for years, and was one 
of the most notorious lobbyists that had ever been seen in Washing- 
ton. That he made immense sums of money and brought it home 
with him to purchase real estate, and to use it in the politics of 
Minnesota, has been asserted time and again, and never denied, and 
his career seems to sustain the charge. It was alleged that at one 
time he returned toMinneapohs, at the end of a session of Congress, 
with $250,000 in his pocket. No argument, or eloquence, or ability, 
or honesty could avail anything against the power of such a man. 

He was Mr. Donnelly's chief est enemy, and has continued such 
to this day. He is a man of desperate recklessness and great 
energy. But he was not content to play the Warwick or King- 
maker. He had dealt in politicians, as he had in high-priced bulls, so 
long that the idea finally entered his head that, instead of merely 
making statesmen, he should become one himself. It occurred to 
him also that if he had been able to wield such great power as a lob- 



THE EMPTY CHAtUS. 91 

byist, while holding the inferior place of postmaster of the House, he 
woultl exercise ten times as much influence if he could walk the floor 
as a full-blown member and an honorable law-maker. And so he 
set himself up for Congress. And then followed a tremendous battle 
of the mouey-bag's. The St. Paul Press was disgusted and enraged. 
It had ruled the roost for years, but now came a bigger rascal than 
itself, with more money and more recklessness. And this is the 
grai)hic way in which the Press, aroused at last to virtuous (!) in- 
dignation, describes Bill King's campaign of 1874 : 

"The recent Congi-essional campaign in this district is likely to pass into his- 
tory as the most rotten and disgraceful one which ever stirred the slimy depths of 
political corruption. No such unblushing and systematic ettbrt was ever made to 
debauch the primaries and purchase votes and delegates into open bribery as has 
been Avitnessed in various parts of this district during the last few weeks. It has 
become such a loathsome and sickening scandal that all honest men turn away 
from it in disgust. If not an entirely new feature in our politics, it has heretofore 
been veiled in prudent secrecy. But now the strHmi)et of comiption strides in naked 
horror over the district and opens her shameful market at every caucus and convention, 
and buys men for the herd, like cattle and sheep."' 

But, in spite of this terrible Indictment, perhaps because of it, 
King w^as elected to Congress to represent the Fifth District of 
Minnesota. 

The Empty Chair. 

But during a great part of his term as Congressman King's 
chair on the floor of the House of Representatives at Washington 
stood empty. 

Was King sick ? No, he was out of the country. He had gone 
to Canada. He had been indicted by the grand jury of the District 
of Columbia for perjury ! How did it happen f 

It is a disgraceful record for Minnesota, and we do not quote it 
now out of any hostility to King — for we never saw the man — but 
as a historian, to show the dreadful influences which have brought 
Minnesota to the condition she is now in, when her people find them- 
selves powerless in the hands of the coiTuptionists, their members 
and Senators bought up year after year, in spite of all party pledges, 
to refuse the people — the self-goveining people (!) of this State — 
the reforms which they demand at the ballot-box. The awful spec- 
tacle and memory of that empty chair should be branded forever in 
the mind of every voter in this State, for all generations to come, and 
should stand there as an incentive to higher and nobler sentiments 
in politics. 

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company. 

The matchless audacity of King is shown by the fact that at 
the very time he was running for Congress, in the Third District of 
Minnesota, an investigation had been commenced in Congress into 
one of the most gigantic frauds ever perpetrated upon the American 
people, and in which he had faken a conspicuous and shameful part. 



92 BTOGBAPmCAL. 

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, in the year 1872, had 
expended about one million dollars in purchasing corruptly from 
Congress an act, approved June 1, 1872, granting them a subsidy of 
$500,000 per year for a term of years, for additional mail service be- 
tween San Francisco, Japan and China. One man, named Richard B. 
Irwin, of San Francisco, an agent of the company, received, It was 
proved and acknowledged by him before an investigation commit- 
tee, the sum of $890,000, of which he disbursed $750,000 and retained 
for his own services $140,000. Irwiu swore (p. 463 of testimony) 
that of the $750,000 named he had paid the sum of $125,000 to 
William S. Kiiig, $10,000 in cash and $115,000 by a check. But, 
long before this fact came out, on February 25, 1873, suspicion had 
fallen on King, and he was the second witness called by the ccwn- 
mittee to testify before it. He was at that time postmaster of the 
House of Representatives. He swore, point blank, (p. 8, Report 
No. 268, Second Session, Forty-third Congress) that he had not 
received one dollar in behalf of the subsidy scheme — '' not one dol- 
lar, directly or indirectly. " That he had no bank account and never 
kept one. 

But on December 28, 1874, less than sixty days after King was 
elected to Congress, George S. Coe, president of the American Ex- 
change Bank of New York, came before the same committee of in - 
vestigation, and testified, under oath, that on the 29th of May, 1872 
^nearly a year before King testified that he had never received a 
dollar from any one in behalf of the subsidy scheme), a man came to 
his bank and presented a check drawn by R. B. Irwin, to bearer, 
for $115,000, the man refusing to be identified or to sign his name 
on the check, and when the bank paid him the $115,000 they sent a 
detective to shadow him to find out wbo he was, and the officer 
found he was William S. King. And this was confirmed by Dumont 
Clarke, the assistant cashier, who also swore that King came into 
the bank a year afterward with another check, accompanied by a 
gentleman who came to identify him, but Clarke said: " Mr. King 
does not need any identification — we remember him," and King 
replied, " It is not always well to have too long memories !'' It also 
appeared that this R. JB. Irwin was the same agent for the Pacific 
Mail Steamship Co. who disbursed $890,000 to corrupt Congress, and 
this $115,000 check was the same which he swore he paid King, be- 
sides $10,000 in cash. And so King's testimony ran bull-headed 
plump up against the sworn oath of two respectable and disinterested 
parties. 

And it was also shown that King's statement that be had never 
kept a bank account was absolutely false, as he had kept a bank 
account with Jay Cook & Co. at the very time the $125,000 was paid 
to him. 

And the committee of Congress reported in favor of placing the 
testimony against King in the hands gf the grand jury of the Dis- 
trict, which was donC; and King was indicted for perjury. In the 



3IR. DONNELLY BECOMES A FAUMEB. UJ 

meautime he had made his escape to Canada, and many months 
afterward the prosecution was dropped and King permitted to re- 
turn home. 

And this is an illustration of the kind of men who have ruled 
the pohtics of Minnesota for twenty-five years past. Kin^- was no 
worse than many others. He simply carried on business more boldly 
and on a larger scale. Some of those who were fighting him were 
bigger rascals than he, with fewer redeeming features of character, 
but they lacked King's nerve and money. But as a chapter in the 
history of free government, in a new country, in one of the States of 
the American Union, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
this dreadful picture can be studied with advantage by all subse- 
quent generations. And it must not be thought that this is an inci- 
dent or a condition peculiar to the past. The same terrible corrup- 
tion is on us now. and not in Minnesota alone, but in every part of 
the United States, and it means — if there is not virtue enough 
among the people to check it by political revolution — it means a 
bloody catastrophe like that depicted in Ccesafs Column. 

Governor Donnelly Becomes a Large Farmer. 

In 1876 there was an opportunity to buy cheap land in Minne- 
sota. The old " St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company " was bank- 
rupt, and its bonds were selling in Holland for the interest due on 
them ; and these bonds were exchangeable for land, at rates that 
made the land cost about one dollar an acre. Mr. Donnelly's two 
sons desired to secure lands on which to make homes, and the re- 
sult was that Mr. Donnelly and a number of his friends secured 
several thousand acres of land in the western part of the State, in 
Stevens County, forty miles from the Dakota line, around the town 
of Donnelly, and proceeded to colonize on them and build homes 
and open up farms. Here for several years they all worked hard 
and lived poor. They raised large crops, and the railroads and 
wheat rings, as I shall show hereafter, stole the profits, and the 
harder they worked the poorer they got. All this helped to open 
Governor Donnelly's eyes to the iniquities of the present system. 
After '^ breaking up " about fifteen hundred acres for himself and 
sons and building several houses and fences, planting trees, etc., he 
was forced to give up the enterprise at very great loss. One of his 
sons became a doctor, and the other a lawyer ; and more than ten 
thousand acres in that county of Stevens, ui that neighborhocnl alone, 
which had once been cultivated fields, relapsed into the wilderness 
condition again, and the people were driven oft' to seek livelihoods 
elsewhere. It is true that during two years the grasshoppers largely 
destroyed the crops, but the principal cause of these results (and 
they were typical of like results occurring all over Minnesota, and, 
in fact, I might say, all over the great West) was the robberies of 
the Wheat Ring aiid the exactions of the railroad companies. 



94 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

The Eea of Wooden Shoes. 

The tendency of these thieveries was to redace the people to the 
condition of peasants. In one of his speeches Governor Donnelly 
foretold that if the treatment of the producers was not changed it 
would not be many years until they reached the era of " wooden 
shoes." His audience laughed, but within five years wooden shoes, 
were to be seen hanging at the door of every store in the Red Eiver' 
Valley. 

About this time a prominent citizen, General T. H. Barrett, of 
Grant County, formerly president of the State Alliance, and an old 
soldier, with an excellent war record, and who had taken up a large- 
quantity of the cheap lands andinvested over $100,000 in the country,, 
had a discussion before a legislative committee, with a famous rail- 
road magnate, who had made himself a many- times millionaire 
by means of watered stock. In the course of the controversy the 
followiug dialogue took place : 

General Barrett. " 1 tell you, Mr. , that if we men, "who brought 

money into that country, cannot get cheaper rates of transportation and better- 
treatment, we "vrill have to leave it." 

R. B. Magnate. " Leave it, d n you, and we will get men in wooden 

shoes to take your places ! " 

This conversation typifies the spirit of the Plutocracy. They 
would like to see the intelligent American yeomanry, native or 
adopted, driven oft^the soil, and their places taken by a horde of un- 
reasoning peasants, in wooden shoes, incapable of self-defense. 

He is Nominated for Congress Again. 

In 1878 the farmers of Minnesota were in a desperate condi- 
tion and a state of great excitement. Their chief crop was wheat, 
and they produced immense quantities of it, of the finest quality 
known in the world, out of which the very best and highest-priced 
flour of commerce was made. This wheat, raised upon a virgin soil, 
was of great strength and nutritive value, and, practically, nearly 
all of the same quality. The Minneapolis millers had, however, 
organized a society, whose ramifications reached all over the North- 
west, to every railroad depot, and excluded all competition and 
freedom of market, by driving out all other buyers, thus leaving it 
in their own hands to say, not how much, but how little, they would 
pay for the farmers' wheat. And of course it was to their interest 
to beat down the price to the lowest possible figure, and yet leave 
the poor producer just enough to induce him to raise another crop 
for them to steal. Their chief officer stood every day, with his 
finger on the telegraphic pedal, and dictated what price should be 
paid for wheat in every town in Minnesota and Dakota Territory 
(now the two States of North and South Dakota;, and 
the farmers had to take what he said or not get anything, for 
there were no other buyers. Not satisfied, however, with this whole- 



'^'HE SWINDLING BBASS KETTLE," 95 

sale robbery, Tvhich iu auy other country except long-enduring 
America would have bred an armed revolution, they declared that a 
diflerence of a few ounces, or even, in some cases, of one ounce or a 
fraction of an ounce, iu the weight of sixty pounds of wheat repre- 
sented a difierence of five, ten, and, in some cases, fifteen cents per 
bushel in the price, on account of a pretended difference in the hour- 
making capacity of the wheat ; although in every case, whatever 
grade they called the wheat, they exacted sixty pounds of wheat, 
making first a large deduction for the dirt that might be in it. For 
instance, if No. 1 had to weigh fifty-eight pounds to the bushel, 
and the sample tested weighed an ounce less than fifty- eight 
pounds, the farmer's whole load was called No. 2, at a loss of 
fifteen cents per bushel, but when they weighed the load they 
exacted not fifty- eight pounds to the bushel, but sixty pounds. 
And thus they established swindling grades, in addition to 
the swindling practiced on the farmers by putting an end to 
all freedom of market in the whole State. And then, having estab- 
lished these grades, they compelled their buyers to buy " number 
one " for " number two," " number two " for " number three," and 
" number three " for " rejected," on penalty ofhaving it graded back 
on them, and they being made to pay the difference out of their own 
pockets or being discharged from their service. But even this was 
not enough. They went into the question of the genealogy of the 
wheat, pretending that one kind of wheat would not make as good 
flour as another, and hence, if they could detect a few grains of 
Lost Nation or Blue Stem in a farmer's sack, his whole load was 
condemned to the lowest grade, and he was robbed of 5, 10 or 15 
cents per bushel. . 

"The Swindling Bkass Kettle." 

But even this was not enough. One would think that if the 
weight of a bushel of wheat was to be ascertained the natural 
course would be to weigh a bushel of wheat, stroked off to a water 
level, on the scales. Instead of doing this, some ingenious knave 
invented what became known as " the swindling brass kettle, " and 
this was speedily adopted by all the wheat-buyers in the State. 
This " little joker " held about one quart of wheat, and was so con- 
structed — as was demonstrated before a legislative committee — 
that an expert could make the same wheat yield three different 
grades, according to the way in which the little vessel w^as filled. 
As some one remarked, '- If a man sneezed over the kettle it would 
make a difi"erence of a grade in the result!" Governor Donnelly 
said in a stump-speech that " there had been enough money stolen 
from the farmers of Minnesota by the Wheat Ring to pave the fioor 
of all hell with gold ! " 

Governor Donnelly w^as struggling away on his frontier farm, 
suffering, in common with his brother farmers, from all these iniquit- 



96 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

ies, his soul boiling within him with righteous indignation. He saw 
the poor farmers, too poverty-stricken in many cases to even put up 
at a hotel, compelled to camp by the roadside, in the midst of the 
cold and snows, sleeping on straw in their buffalo robes, on their 
way to sell their wagon-load of wheat to the swindhng agents of a 
swindling King. 

In tiie meantime, all the vast wealth thus appropriated from 
the hands of a lumdred thousand farmers was transferred to the 
pockets of the millers and the railroad men, and while the farm- 
ers were sinking into poverty, their homes covered with mortgages 
and their families insufaciently fed, cowering in arctic winters, in 
smoke-blackened, wretched rooms, around fires of hay and 
straw or weeds, the city of Minneapolis Avas growing at a 
rate unheard-of in the previous histoty of the world. Great 
mills, the largest then known, sprang up; mighty elevators 
arose, holding millions of bushels of grain ; palatial homes 
were erected, adorned with the paintings of the great European 
masters; diamonds fit for kings Hashed on the breasts of adventurers 
who had never added a dollar to tbe actual wealth of the w^orld, 
and the politics of the State fell into the power of a lot of inhuman 
knaves, who bought the honors of life as they bought their fast 
horses and faster women. 

In their great distress the farmers turned, as usual, to Governor 
Donnelly as their champion, and he could not refuse to respond to 
their call. 

"The Brass Kettle Campaign." 

The Eepublicans had nominated William D. Washburn, Mr. 
Donnelly's old enemy, the real head of the Minneapolis millers, for 
Congress in that district. He had, apparently, a clear field. The 
district was overwhelmingly Republican. The year before, 1877, 
Mr. John S. Pillsbury, another leading Minneapolis miller, the Re- 
publican candidate for Governor, had about eleven thousand major- 
ity in the counties composing that Congressional district. The 
Democrats were hopeless. Washburn's election seemed a foregone 
conclusion. 

A convention of Independent Greenbackers, or Nationalists, as- 
sembled in Minneapohs, September 5, 1878, adopted a platform of 
principles, nominated Mr. Donnelly for Congress, and appointed a 
committee to confer with the Democratic district convention, which 
met the next day in St. Paul. The Democrats, in the face of that 
11,000 Republican majority, knew they had no show for a candidate 
of their own, so, after quite a battle, made in the interest of Wash- 
burn, by hired Democratic clacquers, they indorsed Mr. Donnelly's 
candidacy, and soon after he left his wheat-fields and entered upon the 
canvass. That canvass will long be remembered in this State as the 
most extraordinary campaign ever made in the United States. Mr. 
Donnelly moved constantly from place to place over that vast dis- 



CONTElSTl^G WA^'SHBUliN'S ELECTIOI^. U7 

trict, traveling twenty, thirty, fifty luiles a day, and i nailing, many 
days, two speeches, and sometimes three. ' His campaign was 
largely based on local issues ^ — wrongs sufl'ered by the farujers, the 
robberies of the millers, the railroads, and, above all, the iniquities 
of " the swindling brass kettle." At first Washburn lay back and 
laughed; he relied upon that 11,000 majority. But gradually he 
began to hear that jMr. Donnelly was creating a whirlwind of ex- 
citement wherever he appeared, and converting whole counties to 
his support. And so, as usual, the money beganto flow in unlimited 
quantities, and the candidate and his friends were soon seen rush- 
ing and hustling around the district, wild with terror, running 
from one bank to another, summoning the faithful and disbursing 
the sinews of war. 

The result of the contest was that Mr. Donnelly, in the district 
outside of Minneapolis, swept away that 11,000 majoritij and i^laced 
750 majority on his own side. And he would have carried Minne- 
apolis also, but the Ring had secured the passage of an act whereby, 
in the large towns, the ballots of the voters were all numbered, with 
the number of the voter on the poll list, and thus the employers of 
labor could know exactly hovf their workmen voted. In tb is way 
the labor vote was terrorized, and Minneapolis saved Washburn 
from defeat, although Judges and the Attorney-General and the 
County Attorney had all declared that the law was unconstitutional. 
But, unconstitutional or not, the Eepublicans insisted on keeping it 
in force. 

He Co:ntests Washburn's Election. 

Mr. Donnelly's friends insisted that he must contest Wash- 
burn's election, and he reluctantly consented to do so, for he knew 
too well the power of money. He proceeded to take testimony, act- 
ing as his own attorney. The results are best stated in the follow- 
ing extract from the report of the Committee of Elections, made 
June 16, 1880, signed by Messrs. Manning, Sawyer, Armfield, Beltz- 
hoover and Colerick, and assented to ^except as to one county 
and as to the resolution to seat Mr. Donnelly — -by a majority of the 
committee: 

" The committee find that bribery was committed on behalf of the sitting 
member, Mr. Washburn, by his friends, by members of his district committee, and 
by personal, political and business agents ; that this bribery was not confined to 
any portion of the district, or to any one town or county, but that it extended 
throughout a region of country nearly 400 miles long and 100 miles wide; and they , 
further find that in many cases the bribery has been traced home directly to Mr. 
Washburn himself." 

An Awful Eecord. 

They then gave many instances in support of this conclusion. 
Charles Ber'ens, of North Prairie, swore that he wrote and mailed a 
letter, directly to Washburn himself] i^i which he said he would give 
him his support for $50. Berens was a Democrat and Wash- 

7 



98 BIO(^BAPHICAL. 

burn a Republican. The R-epublican postmaster, Dr. Keith, of Min- 
neapolis, a friend of Washburn, wrote to Berens, saying he was glad 
" Berens would work that way, " and that he would give his letter 
(thus showing that Washburn had received it) to one J. V. Brower, 
a local Republican leader, who would attend to the matter. Brower 
admits the receipt of $50 from Washburn or his committee, and 
he called to see Berens and told him he should " work for Wash- 
burn and he would see him all right ; " but he, Brower, was suspic- 
ious of Berens' good faith, and so did nut pay him the $50, and so 
advised Mr. Washburn. 

This was only oue case out of a hundred. Elections were held 
in moving railroad cars, with cigar-boxes for ballot-boxes. In one 
case eighty or ninety wood-choppers were paid irom $1.65 to $2.20 
each to vote for Washburn ; they did so vote, and the money paid 
them was repaid to the party bribing them, by one Hale, the busi- 
ness manager of Washburn, in Washburn'' s oivn office. (Page 800 
of testimony.) In another case a warm supporter of Mr. Donnelly 
was paid $5 and promised $36 by Washburn's business manager, the 
same Hale, in Washburn's office, and in the presence of C. G. Wash- 
burn, Ms brother, and a member of Congress from Wiscon.^in, with 
whom Hale conferred in whispers before paying the money. (P. 15 
of testimony.) In another case, Bernard Cloutier, a leading Demo- 
crat of Mmneapolis, swore that he was promised $50 by Charles 
W. Johnson, — now Secretary of the United States Senate ! • — then 
Secretary of the Republican District Committee, if he would go out 
and electioneer for Washburn; Johnson paid Cloutier $30 on the 
street, so Cloutier testifies, and the witness called at Washburn's 
office, and he swears that Johnson went into the next room and 
talked tvith Washburn and returned and handed Cloutier tiventy dol- 
lars more! 

The whole record is an awful one. The committee find 291 
cases where men were bribed to vote for Washburn, and the money 
" paid by the sitting member or his business manager, or the clerk 
of his Congressional committee, or some friend, and the parties 
voted for Washburn. " 

The committee say : 

" The records of the contested-election cases of Congress will bo searched in 
vain for a parallel to this case. It shows that the people of this Congressional 
district were debauched to the last degree ; the witnesses, in many cases, defend 
the practice of buying up voters to forego their principles ; the parties who re- 
ceived the bribes in niany cases boasted to their neighbors of the money they had 
received, and seemed to be proud of the high price for which they had sold them- 
selves, and the sitting member (Washbu.rn) did not think it at all necessary to call 
witnesses to deny or explain avxiy this overiohehnijig mass of corruption.'''' 

The committee also find that — 

■•• There is^e-^'idence showing a wide-f.pread csnspiracr among the employers 
(^f labor to corrupt, and, where they could mot corriipt, to intimidate their work- 
■^f'n. . . . The workmen were- intimidated, and believed that they would lose 
taeir means of subsistence if they voted against Washburn," 



BILL KING APPEARS ON THE SCENE, 99 

lu Minneapolis the Republicans persisted in uumberinL' the 
ballots of the workingmen, as I have shown, although the District 
Court of Ramsey County, the Attorney-General of the State and 
their own law-officer had all advised them that such numberino- was 
unconstitutional. - * 

The committee say : 

'• It will be observed that in nearly every one of these eases of bribery coni- 
iintted throughout a region of country half as large as the State of New York the 
uiouey paid IS traced l)ack to tJie city of Minneapolis, the residence of the sittiu-.- 
member. From this i)oiut, as a common center, the corruption radiated in all di'~- 
rections over the district, and when we come to Minneapolis all the testimouv 
shows that it was a A^ery hotbed of bribery."' 

Mr. Donnelly's speakers were bought up for $150 each to malic 
Republican speeches ; Democratic newspapers w^ere bought up for 
$12o each to denounce their own party ticket. The ofiftce of Charles 
Johnson hterally swarmed with men coming for their purchase- 
money. 

The committee thus state the law as to bribery : 

' • It is a clearly established principle of law, both in England and tlu^ United 
States, that bribery committed by the sitting member— -or by anv a'>ent of the 
sitting member, with or without the knowledge or direction of his principal' — 
renders the election void. In England bribery is an offense of so heinous a char- 
acter, and so utterly subversive of the freedom of elections, that, when proved in 
one instance only, the election will be absolutely void." 

But in spite of this law and testimouv, Washburn kept his seat 
How did he do it f I will show. 

Bill King Appears ox the Scexe. 

On the strength of this testimonv, and the fact that there was 
no evidence to show that Mr. Donnelly had spent, or offered to spend 
a smgle dollar for any corrupt purpose, the sub-coiumittee, to whom 
this case had been referred, reported back to the Committee on 
Elections in favor of unseating Washburn and seating Donnelly. A 
great terror fell on the soul of the sitting member, and just then 
mysteriously entjugh, the notorious Bill King reappeared on the 
scene. He went to Willard's Hotel and took a room, witliout renis- 
tering Ins name! He remained there during the greater ^Dart of 
February, as Mi-. Donnelly SAvore, ''in hiding:" he saw him but 
twice in a month. 

The Ax6:n^ymous Lettee. 

He left Washington March 4. 
^^.,,9^ ^^^ ^^^T '^^y lif' left the following letter was written to 
Wilham M. Springer, chairman of the Committee on Elections a 



100 BIOGUAFHICAL. 

Democrat, who, up to that time, had been strongly supporting Don- 
nelly's claims to his seat : 

House of Kepeesentatives, 

Washington, D. C, March 4, 1880, 
Hon. Wm. M. Sprhiger: 

SiK — If you will keep Washburn in his seat, in spite of the Democrats, "vre 
will pay Mrs. S. $5,000. 

Get the thing squashed at once. 

Respectfully. 

There are several things about this letter which would show that 
it was a hona fide proposal to buy Springer, or a memorandum of 
some previous verbal agreement. The contested election might 
have one of two issues: it might result in turning Washburn out 
and putting Donnelly in ] or it might result in turning Washburn 
out and not seating Donnelly, but referring the matter back to the 
district for another election. If the latter course was adopted it 
meant for Washburn another very expensive and hazardous cam- 
paign, and he especially desired to avoid that conclusion of the 
matter. If the letter had originated in a joke, by some outsider, he 
would have said, " If you will keep Donnelly out of Lis seat, " or " If 
you will beat Donnelly" or some such careless phraseology. But 
here the $5,000 was to be paid upon a specific, clearly- defined con- 
sideration — Washhurmvas to he kept in his seat. The writer was 
evidently a man of good business talent. And he was anxious and 
tired of the fight that was raging so fiercely; hewantedit" squashed 
at once.^^ And the $5,000 was to be paid to Mrs. Springer. These 
were all details of which an ordinary jester would not have thought. 

And on the very day that the anonymous letter was written 
Mr. Manning had distributed the printed reports a the Democrats 
of the sub-committee, in favor of ousting Washburn and seating Don- 
nelly (p. 65, report No. 395, 3d sess. Fortieth Congress), so that Mr. 
Washburn then knew, for the first time, that the Democrats were 
a unit in favor of turning him out of his seat, and the Democrats 
had a large majority in that Congress. But the anonymous letter 
was not mailed until March 8th. Springer was absent, in New 
York. His wife opened the letter and showed it to Hon. George W. 
Julian, and he showed it to Mr. Donnelly. Mr, Donnelly testified 
subsequently that he believed it had been written by either Charles 
W. Johnson (Washburn's paymaster in the recent campaign), 
or Bill King, and he told Mrs. Springer so ; and he of- 
fered to help Mr. Springer, when he returned from New 
York, to find out the author of it ; supposing, of course, that 
Mr. Springer, as an honest man, would lay the anonymous letter 
before the Committee on Elections, of wliich he was chairman, and 
have the whole rnatter investigated, as it referred to an attempt to 
corruptly aff"ect the action of that committee. But Springer was 
very angry that the existence of the letter had been revealed. He 
said he would not have it come out for ten thousand dollars, and 



SPKINGEn FLOPS. 101 

Ilia' if il (lid gcL out bo would charge that Henry H. Finley, one of 
,Mr. DoiiiH'Uy's couusd, had written it! The audacity of such a 
charo-e is ast'onishino-. That Mr. DonneUy—or his counsel — seeking 
to oiitnin Washbunrs scat, wotdd offer ^,000 to Springer to keep 
W(!shl)urn in his scat! Only an extraordinary mind could have 
conceived such a threat. He was going to punish Mv. Donnelly for 
exposing an attempt to corrupt the chairman of a committee of 
Conuress! As an honest man he should himself have published the 
anonymous letter at once, and should have been grateful to Mr. 
Donnelly for his offer to aid him in finding the author. 

Springer Flops. 

But at this very time Springer, who had been, up to that date, 
earnestly supporting Donnelly, turned squarely around, and not only 
labored 'to do what the anonymous letter suggested, " keep Wash- 
burn in his seat in spite of the Democrats," but even labored with 
other Democrats on the committee to get them to do the same thing. 
If he had done this openly, one might have supposed that he hail 
experienced an honest change of mind and heart on the question 
involved, but he proceeded to slaughter Donnelly secretly, while 
keeping up the appearance of supporting him. Gen. Van H. Man- 
ning, M. C. from Mississippi, a Democratic member of the Commit- 
tee on Elections, and a man of the highest courage and integrity, 
testified that Springer made him believe, up to the last moment, 
that he would support Donnelly; and General Manning even pro- 
duced, befoi-e the committee of investigation, a scrap of an old 
envelope on which Springer had written down, a day or two before 
the final vote, his own name among the names of those tvho would 
vote to seat Donnelly, and this scrap of paper "Springer admitted 
that he had written. 

An Extraordinary "Pair." 

Springer also sent his clerk to tell General Manning to preside 
in the committee during his absence, and to bring up the Donnelly- 
Washburn case the next day, and that he was " paired" with Mr. 
Calkins, a EepubUcan member of tlie committee from Indiana; and 
Mr. Calkins subsequently, on the 5th of April, 1880, stated in debate, 
in the House, the extraordmary nature of that pair (see Congres- 
sional Record): 

'' I am not able now to recollect the exact language used upon the occasion, 
but the substance of it was, that if his (Springer's) vote was not necessary to de- 
cide the seating of Donnelly he desired me to f pair 'all the way through with 
him, hut if my vote was necessary to keep Donnelly from being seated he authorized me 
to vote in the committee." 

And Mr. Springer followed Mr. Calkins, by saying, on the floor 
of the House, as the Congressional Record shows : 

'■ The matter is siihstantially stated, as I understood it, hy Mr. CalMns." 



102 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

This was a cmiidid confession of one of Wie most peculiar 
pieces of work ever heard of in Congress. This Democrat " pairs '' 
with a Repuhhcan. He gives it out, in his own handwriting, that 
he is in favor of seating Mr. Donnelly ; and sends word to General 
Manning that he is in favor of Donnelly and paired with Calkins, 
and to call up the Donnelly case in his absence; and then he has a 
secret understanding with his Republican friend, Mr. Calkins, that 
this is only a bogus " pair," good only as long as it was of no im- 
portance to the Democratic party or to Mr. Donnelly, but at an end 
the moment Calkins' vote ivas necessary to defeat Donnelly! And all 
this "duplicity," as General Manning justly called it, came into 
play just at the very time some one wrote this eminent Democrat a 
letter saying that Mrs. S. could have $5,000 if he (Springer) would 
" keep Washburn in his seat." And Springer did keep Washburn 
in his seat, despite the law as to bribery and all that overwhelming 
testimony; and Bill King, who left Washington the day the 
anonymous letter was written, reappeared in Washington March 25, 
and left there for good April 1, the very day the final vote tvas taken 
on the Donnelly- Washhimi case in the Committee of Elections, and 
Mr. Donnelly was defeated. 

These are the facts in the case. It certainly looked peculiar, 
and an investigation seemed necessary. 

An Investigating Committee. 

And an investigating committee was appointed to find out who 
wrote that letter, and, while some experts swore positively that the 
anonymous letter was in Bill King's handwriting, others swore that 
it was in Finley's natural, undisguised hand, and by the same mail 
he had written Springer another letter, over' his own signature, also 
in his own natural, undisguised handwriting, so that Springer could 
compare one with the other, and tell just where the anonymous 
letter came from! But Finley swore that he did not write the 
letter, and, as his character for truth and veracity was unim- 
peached, that, of course, ended the matter. But Expert Hay, of 
Washington, prepared a copy of the anonymous letter, made up by 
tracing letters out of Bill King's acknowledged writings, and the 
copy was so exactly like the original anonymous letter that one of 
Springer's experts testified upon it and criticised it for some time, as 
the original letter, before he found out his mistake ! 

Putting Springer's Face in Evidence. 

But the marvel is that a great Democratic statesman should 
" flop " precisely at the very time when $5,000 was ofiered to him 
to have him " flop ; " and that Mr. Donnelly should promise $5,000 
to Springer to keep his enemy, Washburn, in his seat ; and that 



OTHFAl LABORS. 103 

Springer should do it! Mr. Donnelly said in a speech, in St. Paul, 
after his return home : 

" But it is claimed that I Icuew that Mr. Springer was a pure, saintly and vir- 
tuous man, and that 1 had that letter written to him to rouse up his righteous in- 
dignation against Washburn for attempting to bri))e him. God help us! Fellow- 
citizens, you never saw Mr. Springer, or rou would not entertain that hypothesis 
i"or one' moment. I could make ^proffer 'overt of this man's liead and face. The 
small, restless, furtive eyes; the quick, shambling, uncertain shiftiness of his 
bodv; the dints in the flesh of liis face, as if the devil had put mai^ks of identifica- 
tion", with his finger, here and there, on the soft putty of his figure-head;— if you 
c(ml"d behold that countenance, fellow-citizens, and witness that manner, yon 
would not believe for one instant that any man — not a fool — Avould offer him. 
$.5,000 in the hope of rousing up his soul to virtuous resentment against the rav- 
isher of his honor. Oli no ! " Bill Springer is not built that way." 

The End of the Swindling Brass Kettle. 

But while Mr. Donnelly made nothing- by bis tremendous cam- 
paign, ao-ainst such overwhelming odds of numbers and money, the 
people profited bv it; for he literally drove " the little brass kettle " 
out of use — with a residting benefit to the producers of millions of 
dollars. 

More than that, his terrific philippics against the Millers' Ring 
caused those gentlemen to abate their exactions. Wliile they con- 
tinued, and still ccmtinue to this day, to hold possession of the grain 
markets of Minnesota, and exclude ;ill competition, the force of an 
aroused public opinion has shaiued them into decency; and now 
they make but two or three cents difference in the price of grades, 
where formerly they made a difference of fifteen cents — or thirty 
cents between number one and number three; when, probably, the 
only difference between the two grades, in the question of the man- 
ufacture of floury was that number three had a little more light chaff 
and dirt in it than number one, and an allowance had been made, 
in buying, for the dirt ! 

Other Labors. 

Of course, in a brief bi-^graphy hke this, I have been able to 
give the record of but a small i^art of Governor Donnelly's labors for 
the public welfare. I have said nothing about his fight in 1866 to 
prevent the dishonest sale of the land in the Sioux Reservation, 
Minnesota, out of v^hich many men made fortunes. Nor have I 
time to more than allude to the great battle he fought, while a mem- 
ber of the State Senate, in 1874, by which he broke up a corrupt 
contract made by the Interior Department for the sale of all the pine 
on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation, at one-third its real value, 
and saved vast quantities of the school lands of the State from being 
despoiled of the timber which gave them their only value. For this 
o-reat work he was rewarded by the St. Paul Press and the other 
Ring organs with the foulest and most unlimited abuse and slander. 
In fact, during his whole career in public life the denunciations 



104 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

which have been poured out upon him have been in exact proportion 
to his services to the pubhc. He saved the people of Minnesota mil- 
lions of dollars, but, as a consequence, before his great literary suc- 
cess phiced him beyond the reach of his enemies, he' was so black- 
ened by the abuse of a hireling press that a large portion of the 
people of the State regarded him as one of their worst enemies. 
Whenever he would attack a public wrong the thieves would attack 
him, and the more good he did the more he was blackened by abuse. 
The fact tliat he would not " sell out " was regarded by the plun- 
derers as a crime worse than high treason. There was no getting 
along with such a fellow. He had to be crushed. 

"The Rebate oe- Wheat." 

In 1884 the Minneapohs millers had invented a new rascality. 
Not content with all the other thieveries which I have described, they 
got up a scheme whereby any farmer who lived in any part of the 
great territory south and west of Minneapolis, on the lines of the 
Milwaukee and St. Paul Eailroad, could not ship his grain to Minne- 
apolis by paying the freight on his grain to that city, but he was 
compelled to pa'y the freight both to Minneapohs and Chicago, four 
hundred miles further ! The farmers, or the buyers who bought 
from the farnaers, at the local stations, might protest that they did 
not want to ship their wheat to Chicago ; that it would, in fact, go 
no further than Minneapolis as wheat, as it would there be manu- 
factured into flour. It was of no avail; the farmer must pay the 
freight to Chicago or he could not ship his wheat. They would give 
him a receipt for the freight on the extra distance of 400 miles, and 
he could take that receipt to Minneapolis and sell it, at a large dis- 
count, to the miliars, who could use it, for its face value, inpayment 
of freight on flour from Ilinneapolis to Chicago! In this way the 
wretched fariners,'many of whom were struggling with extreme 
poverty, were compelled to pay part of the transportation of the 
mihers' flour. A more shameful and outrageous fraud never was 
practiced on a free people. 

In their distress the people turned, as usual, to Mr. Donnelly.' 
Three conventions were held — an Alhance convention, an Inde- 
pendent Repubhcan convention, and a Democratic convention, and 
all three united in nominating Mr. Donnelly. Two years before,. 
Major Strait, the Republican candidate, had carried the district by- 
nearly 10,000 majority. The Democrats knew there was no chance 
for one of their own men, and so they agreed to cooperate with the 
other elements of opposition to Strait. Strait was himself a miller 
and banker, and supported by the Indian Ring and even by many 
leading Democrats, who had shared in Indian contracts and other 
schemes of plunder. Mr. Donnelly, as usual, made a tremendous 
canvass; he had but $600 with which to make the fight, while it 
was believed that $50,000 was spent in behalf of his opponent. 



BECOMES A BOOK-MAKEB. 10" 

Nevertheless, and despite consklerablc? Democratic disafifec- 
tion, he reduced Strait's majority from nearly 10,000 to about 750. 
He would have won the fight but for the opposition of some of the 
leading Democrats. He had the satisfaction, however, of knowing 
that he had forever broken up the villainous '^ rebate system," just 
as he had abolished " the swindling brass kettle" by his campaign 
in 1878; and he thereby saved the farmers of that section hundreds 
of thousands of dollars annually, forever afterward. 

A Great Book Promised. 

But it would take a book as large as this whole volume to be- 
gin to tell the story of Mr. Donnelly's active and useful life ; and 
that book may some day be written, with thrilling pen-and-ink 
sketches of his contemporaries, drawn to the life, for the instruc- 
tion and amusement of posterity. 

While, therefore, Governor Donnelly's labors have profited him 
nothing, they have been of great value to the State of Minnesota. 
A Repubhcan paper, the Blue Earth City Post, made, June 23, 
1887, the following candid acknowledgment : 

" The Post lias stated again and again what Donnelly has accomplished. He 
has completely revolutionized the legislative sentiment of the State. He has made 
it possible for laws to l)c enacted for the relief of the people. He has educated the 
masses of the Republican party tip to his anti-monopolistic ideas, and forced the 
lea,ders of that party to advocate his principles. He has put the politicians through 
* a course of sprouts,' and won almost completely the battle he began, in favor of 
the people, fifteen years ago ; but as a politician, himself, he has not been a suc- 
cess." 

No, and it is to his honor that he has not. 

The Grange and the Alliance. 

Neither have I the space or the time to enumerate Governor 
Donnelly's labors in the old Grange, or in the later Alhance. He 
has delivered hundreds of speeches in Minnesota and elsewhere, 
without a penny of reward and generally at his own expense. He 
has probably traveled as many miles as would circumnavigate the 
globe, in these efforts to rouse up and defend the people. Neither 
can I give any account of the efibrts to break him down in the 
Alliance, or of his triumph, with the help of the Great West, over 
his enemies, and his election in December, 1890, by an overwhelm- 
ing vote, to the presidency of the Minnesota State Farmers' AUiance, 
or of his labors in the House and Senate in behalf of the Alliance 
and its principles. It is to his honor that during twenty years 
spent in these conflicts he has never received a dollar of compensa- 
tion from the Grange or the Alliance for his great services. He has 
fought as George Washington fought, during the Revolutionary War, 
without a salary, and at his own expense. 

Mr. Donnelly Becomes a Book-Maker. 

Governor Donnelly writes in his journal : ''In the winter of 



106 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

1880-81 there was nothing left of me but the back-bone. T was 
pounding my keel on the rocks. The very gulls had abandoned me. " 

He had been driven out of public life by the corrupt power of 
money; his crops had been devoured by corporations and grasshop- 
pers; his newspaper, the Ant i- Monopolist, had been forced to 
suspend pubhcation; he was covered with debts to the eye-lids. 
Instead of taking to drink to drown his sorrows, or going out and 
hanging himself, as some men would liave done under similar cir- 
cunistances, he retired to " the shades of Nininger; " and there, in the 
midst of the arctic cold and the deep snows of a very severe winter, 
with the sheriff or the constable banging every day or two at tlie 
door, to serve a summons or an execution, he sat quietly down to re- 
create the history of man before the Deluge ; to add myriads of years 
to the records of the human race; and to trace out the original par- 
entage of the European alphabet. He wrote Atlantis. 

He began then and there a wonderful literary career, which has 
lifted him out of poverty and debt, and rendered his name famous 
over all the world. We know of no more striking testimony of an 
indomitable will and unshaken courage than this carving out of a 
new career from the very depths of ruin. And just as soon, it 
must be noted, as his new success gave him a vantage-ground to re- 
new the fight, he commenced once more his fierce battle for the 
rights of the people ; and ever since he has mingled the most ab- 
struse studies of the library with his labors on the stump in behalf 
of popular rights. And it must also be remembered, to his honor, 
that in the darkest hours of his career he never cringed to the pow- 
ers that controlled the State and dispensed fortune; he never 

" Crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee 
That thrift might follow fawning." 

The idea of submission seems never once to have occurred to 
him. It was not in the power of all his powerful enemies, com- 
bined, to pound him into obedience or servility. 

Atlantis was an immediate and great success. The Chicago 
Times first called attention to it, devoting several columns to the 
discussion of its theories. The book has passed through about 
twenty-five editions in the United States, and this on its own 
merits. It commands a larger sale to-day than it did eight years 
ago. It has become one of " the standards " of Enghsh literature. 

I quote some brief extracts from the press reviews, made at the 
time it was iDublished : 

"Mr. Donnelly's theory is an ingenious one, as well as fortified by arguments 
drawn from geology and history, from prehistoric relics, from traditions, and from 
manners, languages and customs of widely separated nations. His theory offers a 
plausible explanation for many puzzling discoveries of the philosophers, and his 
book will give a fresh impulse to historic and prehistoric research." — Philadelpkia 
Inqxdrer. 

' '• Mr. Ignatius Donnelly has written a unique and interesting argument to 
prove that the legend of Atlantis is based upon fact, and tliat it tells of the first 



''ATLANTIS.^' 107 

and one of the greatest of civilized nations, which a terrible convulsion of nature 
obliterated." — Vongreyationahst, Boston. 

" All of this is very startling, but the author has made out a case which, if 
not convincing, is at least interesting and wonderfully plausible. His book shows, 
throughout, wide reading, logical clearness and careful thought, and the work can- 
not fail to interest by the vast accumulation of out-of-the-way information it con- 
tains." — Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston. 

"This is a most remarkable book, entertaining, instructive and fascinating to 
a degree. ... A l)ook well worth reading. The world will never tire of the 
stor}' of the lost ,\.tlautis and of speculations in regard to it. It has been the theme 
(»f the poet and the philosopher. Xow it is brought to the test of science.' — 
Bfooklyii Union- Argus. 

Atlantis has been republished by Sampson, Low & Co., in 
England, and has gone through several editions there. It is read in 
all parts of the civilized world. Governor Donnelly has received 
letters of congratulation and commendation from Spain, France, Ger- 
many, all parts of the British Islands, Australia, New Zealand, India, 
Japan and China. Pohtically the ])ook was a great help to Governor 
Donnelly, for, while the press of the whole world was sounding its 
])raises, it was impossible for the hireling newspapers of his own 
State, working under the inspiration of the corporations, to convince 
the people any longer that he was a base, low rufiiau and dema- 
gogue, as they had very eftectually done before its publication. The 
book was therefore a sort of resurrection for the proscribed friend 
of the people. 

Governor Donnelly may justly claim that he was the first man 
in the world who thought to identify Atlantis with the antediluvian 
worhl, the laud of Noah. In other words, he first found the link of 
connection between the story told by the Egyptian priests to Solon 
and the tale of the Deluge told in Genesis. He was also the first to 
prove that the alphabet of the Phoenicians, from which our own 
alphabet is derived, and the Landa alphabet, of the Mayas of Cen- 
tral America, were both derived from one common source, the 
alphabet of Atlantis. He was also the first to connect Plato's story 
with the legends of the Greeks and other nations of antiquity, and 
show that the gods of the pagan world had been originally the 
kings and queens of Atlantis. 

Among the many tributes paid to Mr. Donnelly's book, one of 
the most gratifying was the following letter from Hon. W. E. Glad- 
stone, the great English parliamentary leader and scholar : 

"10 Downing Stkeet, Whitehall, March 11, 1882. 

" Dear Sir : I thank you very much for your ' Atlantis,' a copy of which you 
have been so kind as to present to me. Though much pressed by public affairs, 
1 have contrived to read already an appreciable portion of it, with an interest 
Avhich makes me very desirous to go through the whole. 

" 1 may not be able to accept all your propositions, but I am much disposed to 
believe in an Atlantis ; and I think 1 can supply you with another case in which 
traditions have come down into the historic age' from periods of time lying far 
away in the background of preceding ages. 

"Homer unquestionably (I do not fear to say) believed in a sea-exit from the 
Northern Adriatic, and imagined the north of Europe to be an expanse of water. 



108 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

And this, geology, T helieA-p, assmes -as that it Avas, hut not -within A^hat atc hnvf 
heretofore received as the limit of the memor}' of man. 

" Three or four years ago the Duke of Argyle was at Yeniee, and saw on a lish- 
stall a fish which he was familiar with on the west coast of Scotland, but which is 
unknown in the Mediterranean generally. And, on further examination, he found 
that the corner of the Adriatic corresponded, as to local fish, in a high degree, with 
the Atlantic. This is a curious and, perhaps, a significant fact. 

' ' 1 am, dear sir. your very faithful and obedient 

"W. E. Gladstone. 
'■'■Ignatius Donnelly^ Esq., TI. S. A.'^ 

I understand that Governor Donnelly has collected a vast mass 
of new material since the publication of Atlantis, and that he will 
soon publish another work on the same subject, which he thinks 
will strongly corroborate his first book. 

"Ragnaeok." 

Mr. Donnelly's second book, Magnaroh, takes its name from the 
most ancient legends of the Scandinavians, which contain a descrip- 
tion of a Day of Judgment or destruction which once, in the remote 
past, overtook the world, when a great conflagration swept the face 
of the planet. The following review will give an idea of the nattire 
of the work : 

" The title of this book is taken from the Scandinayian sagas, or legends, and 
means ' the darkness of the gods.' The work consists of a chain of arguments 
and facts to prove a series of extraordinary theories, viz.: That the Drift Age, 
with its vast deposits of clay and gravel, its decomposed rocks, and its great rents 
in the face of the globe, was the result of contact between the earth and a comet, 
and that the Drift-material was brought to the earth by the comet; that man lived 
on the earth at that time ; that he was highly civilized ; that all the human family, 
with the exception of a few persons who saved themselves in cav'es, perished from 
the same causes which destroyed the mammoth and the other pre-ghacial animals ; 
that the legends of all the races of the world preserve references'to and descrip- 
tions of this catastrophe ; that following it came a terrible age of ice and snow, of 
great floods, while the clouds were restoring the waters to the sea, and an age of 
darkness while the dense clouds infolded the globe. These startling ideas are sup- 
ported by an array of scientific facts, and by legends drawn from all ages and all 
regions of the earth. 

"There is nothing impossible or unreasonable in the theory of this singular 
work. A hundred years ago it was believed that there were in space only suns and 
planets. We now know that there are multitudes of asteroids or y'anetoids— > 
bodies so small as to be scarcely perceptible in the telescope — and it is conceded 
that the tails of comets consist of vast streams of stones, and that even the heads 
of comets may be composed of great masses of rocks. It follows that there may 
be, in space, great regions occupied by immense ck)uds of stones, gravel and dust. 
This is coniirmed by the fact that annually, in November and August, the orbit of 
the earth traverses portions of the heavens Avhence fall toward the earth millions 
of stones, and it is known that these meteor-bearing regions correspond with the 
paths of certain comets. 

"If, in former geological ages, space contained greater quantities of this loose 
and floating material, the earth would necessarily have received vast accessions to 
its bulk from this source. In the course of time the planets have cleared the 
space within the reach of their attractive power, by drawing in this loose material, 
but to some extent the work is still going on. Professor Nordenskjold has recently 
found that on the great snow-covered plains of interior Greenland, far removed 
from volcanoes or mountain-chains, there is a constant shower of cosmic dust, and 



■' BAGNAliUK." 10!) 

that this dust forms a clay-like deposit. If a small deposit of clay comes from the 
heavens at the present time, is it unreasonable to suppose that in former ages sim- 
ilar deposits may have fallen in greater quantities, and formed the ela3'-beds which 
cover a large part of the earth's surface? And if this be true of clay, which is 
granitic stones ground to dust, Avhy may it not be equally true of gravel, which 
consists of stones in process of being ground to dust? 

"Certain it is that geologists entertain widely different views as to the origin 
of the Drift. One class holds that land ice or glaciers have no power to tear and 
scorn- the surface rocks, or to break tiiem up and reduce them to gravel ; that, on 
the contrary, ice is 'protective rather than erosive,' and that the atmospherically 
wasted (?e<>77«,s* of a glacier bears no resemblance to the 'till,' and that the results 
characteristic of the Glacial Age were due to floating icebergs; while, on the other 
hand, another section claims that the mountains of New England, marked by the 
glaciers to their very summits, have been constantly above the sea, since a period 
ages prior to the coming of the Drift, and that the Drift gives evidence, in its non- 
stratified condition, and in its absence of fossils, that it was not laid down in the 
water, either fresh or salt. 

'' Ragnarok supplies a new theoiy as to the origin of the Glacial Age, co- 
herent in all its parts, plausible, not opposed to any of the teachings of modern 
science, and curiously supported by the traditions of mankind. Jf the theory is 
true, it will be productive of far-reaching consequences ; it will teach us to look to 
eosmical causes for many things on the earth which we have heretofore ascribed to 
telluric causes, and it will revolutionize the present science of geology.'' 

Bagnarok was published by D. Appleton &; Co., of New 
York. It proved a great success; five thousand copies (the first 
edition) were sold in six months, and its theories were the cause of 
wide-spread interest and discussion. The book is now published by 
F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago. It is in its twelfth edition. I quote 
extracts from a few of the thousands of newspaper notices : 

" The idea begins to draw upon the minds of men that this globe of ours could 
not have rolled in space for hundreds of millions of years unaffected by the other 
forms of matter which occupy space. And just as every November we pass through 
regions from which showers of stones are attracted to the earth, burning as they 
(!ome, and filling the heavens with celestial fireworks, so, in past ages, vaster and 
denser bodies of matter, comets' tails or what you will, protected from combustion 
by their own atmosphere of gases, may have struck the earth, covering it with 
detritus, and scarring and tearing up its surface." — Loidsville Courier- JouDial. 

"This stupendous speculator in cosmogony begins and ends with 'Drift,' on 
the summit of which temporary pile of successive superincumbent ruins of Avorlds 
destroyed by convulsions or by comets, at vast intervals of time, the human race 
breathes out its moment of a life. ... A book which, with all its deliberate eccen- 
tricities, is often eloquent and suggestive." — Loiidon Daihj News. 

"It is a bold enterprise, and its very boldness gives it a peculiar fascination. 
The vast range of the survey and the multitude of witnesses, of every age and 
clime, which the author passes in review, yield the reader a decidedly new sensa- 
tion, something like that of making a voyage around the earth in mid-air." — Home 
Jonrnal. 

• ' Mr. Donnelly can claim the credit of furnishing a theory which is consistent 
with itself, and, as he evidently thinks, with the scientific requirements of the 
problem, and also with the teachings of Holy Scripture. . . . The shifting opinions 
of geologists in regard to this question,, and the fact that the latest theoiy is mani- 
festly inadequate, afford, we must say, a fair presumption in the author's favor. 
. . . This is just that kind of teaching which cannot be met with a sneer. . . . 
The book is well worth studying. If it is true, it answers two very important pur- 
poses — the first connected with science, and the second with prophecy. It gives 
a reasonable account for the tremendous changes which the earth has'undergone, 



110 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

and it shows how its dissolution, so clearly described in St. Peter's Second Epistle, 
may be accomplished." — The Churchman, New York. 

"In this remarkable volume Mr. Donnelly, with an originality and vigor of 
which we had a taste in Atlantis, unceremoniously knocks in the head all the 
elaborate theorizing as to the glacial period and other scientific forms of argument, 
and boldly proceeds to prove that the world owes its various physical changes to 
collisions with comets, more or less terrific in force, and to the calamitous and 
long-continued visitations of snow, and flood, and fire, the result of the encoun- 
ter." — Troy Times. 

"The work will be read with curious interest by the learned, and, though it 
draws perpetually on the treasuries of scientific and ethnic lore, the unlearned will 
pore over its pages with eagerness and delight. . . Bagnarok is a strong and 
brilliant literary production, which Avill command the interest of general readers, 
and the admiration and respect, if not the universal credence, of the conservative 
and the scientific." — Prof. Alexander Wixohell, in The Dial. 

" In a few sharp, short and decisive chapters the author disposes of the theory 
that the vast phenomena of the ' Drift' could have been produced by the action of 
ice, no matter if the ice swept over the continent. His facts and their application 
are certainly impressive. In fact, his book is very original '" — Hartford Times. 

" It is one of the most powerful and suggestive books of the day, and deserves 
respectful attention, not only from the general reader, but from the scientist." — 
The Continent. 

"No mere summary can do justice to this extraordinary book, which certainly 
contains many strong arguments against the generally accepted theory that all the 
gigantic phenomena of the Drift were due to the action of ice. Whether readers 
believe Mr. Donnelly or not, they will find his book intensely interesting." — The 
Guardian, Banbury, England. 

"These two volumes are phenomenal. The author-, who has been known as 
one of the most prominent political men west of the Mississippi, suddenly appears 
before the public as a writer upon scientific subjects, and issues two volumes in 
quick succession, one of which reaches the seventh edition m less than nine 
months, and the other is m a fair way for a similar success." — American An- 
tiquarian. 

Confirmation of the Ragnarok Theory. 

The truth of the theory set forth in Bagnarok has received 
starthng confirmation in the fact that the leading astronomer of Eng- 
land has, since its publication, presented the world with a powerful 
work, in which he proves that the accepted theory of the formation 
of worlds from matter in a gaseous condition is impossible. He 
shows that space is full of vast streams of stones, similar to the 
meteoric stones, and that wherever a center of attraction is estab- 
lished among them, by any one stone being much larger than the 
rest, a sun or planet is formed, by the rushing together of the 
rocky fragments to the center of gravitation; and that the clash 
and impact of the stones produces such intense heat that the body 
becomes luminous, and a blazing world or star is formed.* 

Bagnarok is probably the most original book ever written. 
The whole cor) ception is perfectly novel; and th© linking together 
of the wonderful legends of mankind with the latest conclusions 
arrived at by the scientific world is a marvelous piece of work. 

* The revelations of the spectroscope prove the truth of this theory. 



AUTHOBSmP OF THE SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. Ill 

Tlie light the theory throws upon Genesis and the Fall of Man is 
unique, and is accepted by many clergymen as true. 

Since the publication of Eagnarok, Governor Donnelly has re- 
ceived corroborations of his theory from scholars in all parts of the 
world, and he hopes to some day publish a continuation of the work. 

Francis Bacon's Authorship of the Shakespeare Plats. 

It would take a volume much larger than the space assigned 
for this biography to give anything hke a full account of the vast 
labors of Governor Donnelly in the preparation of that which is, 
perhaps, the chief literary work of his life — his book T/ie 
Great Cryptogram. 

The size of the book (containing a thousand pages) ; the im- 
mense toil involved in its preparation, continued through fifteen 
years; the difficulty of the working-out of the hidden cipher ; the 
intense microscopic work of the cipher itself, all make the book 
memorable in the annals of literature. 

The Pall Mall Gazette, of London, said : 

" Mr. Ignatius Donnelly's Great Cryptogram is not a thing to be dismissed 
in a moment. If it be a delusion, it is respectable by reason of its very magni- 
tude. The labor represented by the two great volumes before us, and especially by 
the second, is stupendous. America, the land of • big things,' has in Mr. Donnelly 
a son worthy of her immensity."' 

The London Telegraph (" the newspaper with the largest 
circulation in the world") May 2, 1888, said : 

'' Whether it is to be regarded as fatal to the personal claims of our sovereign 
English genius, a piece of extraordinary special pleading for the long-delayed 
recognition of his great rival, Bacon, carrying judgment and conviction with it, 
or only a vast delusion, based on some remarkable freaks of chance, it will be for 
specialists and the age to say. . . . 

Such are a few of these strange ' finds ' of Mr. Donnelly, and, if he has not 
allowed himself to be deceived, it is impossible to avoid the deduction that, for om 
purpose or another, a ivo)iderfully intricate series of stories has been threaded through 
the iveb of the great English' classic.''^ 

Laboiicliere'' s Truth, the great independent iournal, of May 
20, 1888, said : ' ^ i j ; j 

' ' I think every critic will say that the book is a monument of laborious indus- 
try, such as has hardly ever been produced before outside of Germany, and that 
some of Mr. Donnelly's results are very astonishing, while all of them are interest- 
ing and curious. ... 

The Opinion of Mathematicians as to the Cipher. 

But some readers may ask: "Has not Mr. Donnelly, as 
the London Telegraph suggests, deceived himself? Is not the 
cipher an illusion ? " 

I answer this by saying that the proof-sheets of the book were 
submitted to two eminent mathematicians — one in England and one 
in this country -- George Parker Bidder, Q. C, of London, and Pro- 



112 BIOGBAFHIGAL. 

lessor Elias Colbert, of Chicago, author of well-known works on 
astronomy, etc.* Both gentlemen took their time and thoroughly 
examined the proofs submitted to them, and these are their verdicts; 

Me. Bidder's Statement. 

"House ob^ Commons, April 19, 1888. 

' ' My Dear Sie : I have given a good many hours to the examination of the 
proofs of Mr. Donnelly's hook, so far as the method of the Cryptogram is dealt 
with, and write to let you know the opinion 1 have formed. 

' ' In the first place, 1 am amazed at the stupendous industry and perseverance 
shown, and the ingenuity with which Mr. Donnelly has followed up his 'dues. 
The numerical coincidences, in the position of words which he has discovered in 
the plays — notably of suggestive words such as ^Bacon,^ ^St. Albans,' etc. — are 
very remarkable, so remarkable, in fact, that my own strong belief is that they 
cannot possibly be due to chance. And considering this in connection with the 
extraordinary peculiarities of the text, which he ppinfs out, both as regards typog- 
raphy and paging, and as regards the unnatural introduction of words into the 
text, I am further strorfgly inclined to the opinion that Mr. Donnelly is probably 
right in his conclusions that there is a cipher interwoven — jjossibli/ several — and very 
probably by Bacon.''' 

Prof. Colbert's Statement. 

'■'■I am obliged, to indorse the claim made by Mr. Donnelly that he has found a cipher 
in some of the jylags. It can be intelligently traced by the aid of explanations given 
by him, some of which' are only hinted at in the book. I do not say, nor does he 
claim, that he has discovered the complete cipher, and I think it is quite probable 
that some of the readings he gives will bear modification in the light of subse- 
quent knowledge. But the cipher is there, as claimed, and he has done enough 
to j^yove its existence to my satisfaction." 

Opinions of Eminent Critics. 

In addition to these statements, which should be conclusive, I 
add a few other testimonials : 

That distinguished scholar and author, Count Vitzthum 
d' Eckstadt, wrote, from Paris, to a friend in London, under date of 
May 18th, 1888 : 

''Will you be good enough to convey to Mr. Donnelly my sincerest congrat- 
ulations. I do not know whether the opinion of an old diplomate may be of any 
value to him. At any rate I give it to you. . . . Taking the first volume alone, 
it is absolutely conclusive. It is a fair, scientific investigation, most skillfully 
conducted and complete. I do not know which to admire niost, the industry, the 
extreme ingenuity, or the strong power of reasoning shown in these volumes. The 
style is perfect; terse, business-like, and always' to the point. The reader himself 
assists in the inquiry. Every honest man, after reading the first volume, must 
come to the conclusi('>n that the Shakespeare theory has no leg to sta)id upon. Those 
who have not studied the book have no voice in the question. Mr. Donnelly may 
safely appeal to posterity, as. Lord Bacon did. . . . It is certain the cipher exists, 
though whether the actual key, by which it is to be unlocked, has been yet found, 
may be doubtful. I can never believe that Bacon left this discovery to mere 
chance; and- it has been a chance that a' man has been found, in the nineteenth 
century, ingenious and persevering enough to find and to trace out the existence of 
a cipher. I am convinced that Bacon left the MSS., together with the key, either 

* Mr. Bidder was selected for the task of examining the proofs by Mr. Knowies, 
the editor of the Nineteenth Century, the leading review of England, and Professor 
Colbert was selected by Eon. Joseph Medill, editor of the Tribime of Chicago. 



OPINIONS OF EMINENT CBITICS. U3 

t(, Percy, or Sir Tol)io Matthew, with authority to publish the secret after his death 
rJut the civil war In-oke out, and the trustees may have thought that under the 
rule of Cromwell and the Puritans the memory of Bacon, as a philosopher, would 
ha^e been rmned It it were published that he was the author of the plays. In the 
interest of their deceased friend they may have destroyed the MSS. of the dU.vs 
together with the key." ' i'^".'''? 

Mrs. Henry Pott, of LoDdoii, the author of that great work 
l.hePromus,i\nL\ other hooks, and a hxdvof extensive learnino- and 
profound penetration, thus writes to the Bacon Journal of Loifdon : 
t,, /V^lfll''''8'FfJ t« the cipher part of Mr. Donnelly's book, it appears to me tliat 
IL''''* M^^^'^'P^n ^^'^-^^^^' ^^^ ^^'^^^^ ^^«"er and luirrativis inclosJdinit 
being as Mr. Donnelly has stated, is beyond q.e.tiou. All those who have expressed 
themselves, who are competent to understand it, and who have been able to sivo 
time to the close exammation of the arithmetical calculations, of the sequenc^e of 
words l)>^means of these calculations, and of the doctrine of chances against or in 
favor of that sequence, have come to the same conclusions: namely, that the d„hrr 

"T- V'*Af ' V.^''"'*//'•^^'''- '^''''^"*^''"^^^^- • • • 'J^Iie imperfections in minor details to 
which Mr Donnelly draws attention are, as he modestly says, 'due, not to the 
maker of the cipher, but to the decipherer.' And we unite with Mr. DoAiudly in the 
belief that wherever a sentence is not mathematically exact, or whencve'r a e-an 
or flaw occurs m the work, it will, with the further time and labor which :Mr Don- 
nelly is bestowing upon it, be corrected and the rule brought to absolute perfection.-' 

Sir Joseph Neal McKenna, member of Parliament, and an 
emmeut cryptologist, writes to the Dubhn Nation as follows : 

ir.r. 1} ^"^^l ^^'^'^ ^^^' ''^'^'^^ ^"^'^"^^ "^^^ ^i^'*^' considerable practice in the construc- 
tion of cryptograph notes and messages for the purposes of secrecy, brevity and 

r'nUvT?-; • ; 7^'^ \ ""''''' '■' ^^."* ^^^^^'« '' -^ ^'^^'^i'^^' demonstrated S4a 
cally-constructed cryptogram m the text of the play Ilenn, IV., which tells the 

FolVn'Jifti ''Vi";.?^'"''''^^ ^? maintain that the printer, editor or publisher of the 
Tf fh . -r "* ^^-'r T'^Y^^ PP""^ ^^ ^^'' infolding of the cryptogram in the text 
wT,^i r ^'""^ published m that year. I do not go into minor points, none of 
which however, m the slightest degree derogate from the certainty with which I 
have already pronounced my own opinion or judgment." 

.000^^'^^^^^^^" Greenwood, in the Kansas City Journal of May 21, 
1888, says : -^ ' 

,>.;./ T'l^T^ going into all the details in the first part of the book; ... in 
point of scholarship, close study, numerous and extended comparisons, minute re- 

entile history, . . it must be confessed that Mr. Donnelly, by all laws of evi- 
dence has shown that Shakspere could not have written the plays that are now 
f.vi5o, •■ ■ i ■ ^^/'^^^t^^i^^^^^t'^e^'tainty, the chance that he clid'so would be as 
first mr^o?t'h?/'w "'"''i*'''^ ''^i^ T"^'^'^'- ^^:^^"T of intelligent lawyers, on the 
ti St pait of this great work, would bring m a verdict against Shakspere's author- 

tho?; U.uAhTff't? '"'•^'l*' ''^^^'; gl^^ci^S through this part of the work, that 
theie IS nothing in the cipher, unless he actually proves it mathematically. It 
would take an expert mathematician several months to verify all these statements 
or to disprove them It would be very much less work to calculate an eclipse of 
the sun or moon. On the other hand, if the number-relations he presents and veri- 
fies are simply happy coincidences without any significance, then it is t/>e most 
elaborate cmdcomiected set 0^ coincidences that has e to light i,i chance 

Zl;nu.(uJ 'V 'v'^'f r' r}^ ^'^'"^^^ ^ ^"^'^^ P«i^* i^ it- Of coVse it would 
?.h?^V^ 1 f (r English scholars to give an author justice who hails from the 
wheat-faelds of ^imnesofa. 



114 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

The Philadelpliia Evening Star says : 

' ' If Mr. Donnellj^ has made a single miscount his critics shoukl be able to 
demonstrate it. He gives the page and the number on the page of every ci}3ber 
word. It would, of course, be an easy matter for anybody to pick out words from 
the pages of the plays that would make a consecutive story ; but here we have a 
story which is consecutive, which is grammatical, which is written in the purest 
English, with a rhetoric striking alike by its force and its simplicity, and which 
retains the very flavor of the Elizabethan age, and all the words corresponding 
with certain root numbers, which never vary, save according to certain modifiers! 
This could not he the work of chance. It rests Avith those who may deny the possi- 
bility of the cipher to explain away this startling fact— if they can. . . . Let any- 
body take any of the cipher pages, as we have done, and a glance at its symmetri- 
cal structure will sulfice at once to exclude the idea that Mr. Donnelly has deceived 
himself. The figures are there. They are not there arbitrarily. It is inconceiva- 
ble how they could be put there by any system of self-deception, and no other con- 
clusion appears possible than the alternative suggested by the London editor — 
that there is a cipher and Mr. Donnelly hasfoimd it.'''' . . . 

Shakspere's Claims. 

While differences of opinion exist as to the reahty of the cipher, 
there is none as to the literary merit of the work, or its effect in 
demolishing the claims of William Shakspere to he the author of 
the great plays which hear his name. 

Dr. R. M. Theohald, A. M., Hon. Secretary of the Bacon 
Society, of London, says : 

' ' I cannot refrain from expressing my most unqualified admiration of his 
[Mr. Donnelly's] masterly exposition of the Bacon-Shakspere case. His first 
volume is, by far, the completest and strongest Baconian argument ever written 
Its cogency astonished even me, convinced as I am from long familiarity with all 
sides of the argument. How the Shakspereans will wriggle away from'thosc 200 
pages of ' parallels' I cannot conceive. It is the most magnificent hit of circumstan- 
tial evidence ever produced in the whole range of the vorld's literature. . . . But there 
is the same cogency in most of the other chapters ; and the bright, attractive, 
eloquent, often genuinely poetical, way in which he marshals his arguments and 
enforces them, makes the whole book "so tascinating — so absolutely irresistible — 
that I find it far more captivating than any novel I ever read."' 

The Hon. Joseph Medill, the distinguished editor of the Chicago 
Tribune, thus expressed himself the day the hook appeared : 

<< For those Avho have not seen Mr. Donnelly's work, the magnitude of his 
performance cannot be described adequately Avithout danger of apparent exagger- 
ation. Whether the Avorld shall accept his conclusions or hold the verdict in 
abeyance, Ignatius Donnelly must hereafter be counted among the men whose 
industry, persistence and sincerity have thrust into literature and history a force 
compelling recognition, if not conviction ; and whose prodigious and patient 
labor has amassed against the current belief about Shakspere too much testimony 
for incredulity to scoff at, for jests to smile out of sight, or for learning to ignore." 

The New York World said : 

" It is the most startling announcement that has been hurled at mankind 
since Galileo proclaimed his theory of the earth's motion." 

Julian Hawthorne says : 

^' It involves the most interesting literary possibility of our generation." 



HON. JOHN BBIGHTS OPINION. 115 

The San Francisco Argonaut said ; 

'• The ignorance of Shakspere, the learning of Bacon ; the parallel passages 
in Bacon's works and in tho plays ; the unity f)t' thought, the conimunitv of error ; 
the employment of the identical metaphors, and of unusual and uexrlv coined 
words ; th^ display of the same phases of religious belief, of politics and of liuuiau 
sympathy ; the acute knowledge displayed in the plavs of comuiou law, even in 
its most technical form, as well as of' science, lyid of moral and natural philos- 
ophy, are all strikingly set forth, and demonstrate that either Bacon wrote all, or 
at least a portion of the plays, or ■ that he and Shakspere were mental twins — 
each a hemisphere of a single brain."' 

The Bury Times, East Lancashire, England, said : 

" This is one of the most remarkable books America has ever produced. . . 
A monument of ability, industry and literary acumen . . . An epoch-making book." 

Hox. John Bright's Opixiox. 
The Great Cryptogram has made many converts, among 
others the famous English statesman, John ]>right. Tlio Birmiug- 
liam Daily Mail of May 13, 1888, said : 

'' ilr. John Bright, M. P., is much better and practically out of danger. He 
has not been troubling his head recently about ])olitical matters, but for the last 
few- weeks he has been chietly occupied in thj studr of the Bacon-Shakspere 
controversy. ^Ix. Bright is one of the few living men who have read all through 
the ponderous volumes of Mr. Donnelly. He does not go all the way and assert 
the accuracy of Air. Donnelly's discovery, but in his uncompromising and unhesitat- 
ing manner declares his belief that, whoever may have Avritten the plavs. it was 
not William Shakspere."' 

The English newspapers also report Mr. Bright as saying, in' 
his brusque fashion, ihat " any man who believes that William 
Shakspere wrote Lear and Hamlet is a fool ! " 

The St. Paul Pioxeer-Press Agaix. 
Xo book ever created such intense excitement as The Great 
Cryptogram ; every newspaper in England and America was ftdl of 
ir, before and after it appeared; and the New York World devoted 
tfro whole 2^nges to it. But the book was, so far as the sales were 
concerned, a comparative failure. Joseph A. Wheelock began his 
])ersecution of it before it appeared. A sub editor of the Pioneer- 
J'ress named Piles (appropriate name) prepared a small book, 
called The Little Cryptogram, which was a burlesque of Governor 
Donnelly's work; copies were sent to all the newspapers in the 
United States, and even to England; agents weie employed by the 
day, by the Pioneer-Press, to peddle copies everywhere, at tweutv- 
livc cents each, in fidvance of the agents seut out by Governor 
Donnelly's publishers, so that when thr)se agents called to sc'l tho 
work they would hud the public mind tilled with the belief that iho 
ciidier w as an absurd fraiul. These acts, with a concerted attack 
fioni the plutocratic press, and a failure of the publishers t > procure 
tlie fi.OOO agents they had promised (they had but about :r>0 i >r the 
whole United States), and tlie fact that thebook wasnoto:i;;,ilein any 
book-store (the publishers had threatened the retail boolvsellers witia 



116 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

prosecution if they dared to sell a single copy of it, while for ninety- 
nine hundredths of the territory of the United States there were no 
canvassing agents to seek out those who might want it), could have 
but one result: the sale was but a few thousand copies where the 
pubhshers had promised Grovernor Donnelly a sale of 100,000 copies. 
The New York Morning Journal said : 

' ' No book of modern times lias excited so mucli interest all over the civil- 
ized world as this volume, and its sale will probably reach a million copies." 

The free advertising which the book had received was worth a 
million dollars, and if the book had been properly presented to the 
j)ublic there ought to have been such a sale as the Journal 
l^redicted. 

Visit to England. 

On March 17th, 1888, G-overnor Donnelly sailed from New York, 
on the steamship Etruria, of the Cunard line, for Liverpool. The 
object of his visit was to secure an English copyright of The 
Great Cryptogram. He returned the same year on the Aurania, 
of the same line, leaving Liverpool August llth, and reaching New 
York August 19th, after a delightful sea voyage. He spent most of his 
time in London, but visited and traveled through Scotland and Ire- 
land. In the latter country he visited the birth-place of his father, 
and was most hospitably entertained by many relatives. While in 
Fintona, he delivered a lecture upon " The Irish in America, " and 
dw^elt upon the necessity for temperance among the Irish people. 
His address, particularly that part of it w^hich related to the ques- 
tion of total abstinence, produced a great effect upon his audience, 
and was extensively quoted in the newspapers of Ireland. The pro- 
ceeds of the lecture went to the benetit of the Liberal campaign 
fund. He was called upon, while in Fintona, by a delegation of 
leading citizens, and asked if he would become a candidate for 
Parliament on the Liberal ticket, and assured that if he would 
they would nominate and elect him. He declined on the ground 
that, while he was deeply interested in the success of the movement 
for Home Rule, his interests and feelings all tied him to his native 
country; that he was first, last and all the time an American. 

English Newspaper Abuse. 

G-overnor Donnelly and his book were the theme of constant 
discussion and general denunciation by the English newspapers. 
As some one said, '^ if the English people had to give up Shakspere 
or the Indian Empire, they would let the Indian Empire go.'' In 
fact, one distinguished English lady told Governor Donnelly that the 
English people would give up Christianity before they would surren- 
der the Bard of Avon. The fact that G-overnor Donnelly was an 
i^anerican had a great deal to do with the ferocious opposition of tlie 
.' English press, As one English gentleman said to him, " If you 



DEB A TES IN ENGLAND. 1 17 

liad eveu been a Canadian, wo would not feel so badly about it! " 
r>ut to think that the secret which had escaped the eyes of the E.)g- 
lish critics, during three hundred years, should be found out by^ii 
despised Yankee, from the backwoods of America, where but yester- 
day the buffalo and the red man held undisputed sw\ay, was, as 
Artemus Ward said, " too much ! too much ! " 

Governor Donnelly kept his temper under all the abuse that 
was heaped upon him, and replied in an ertective manner to many 
of his assailants, through the columns of the daily press. The Bacon 
Society of Loudon, an associati(m of ladies and gentlemen of high 
culture and social standing, formed to study the works of Francis 
Bacon — both his acknowledged ^vorks and those that are attributed 
to him — ^ invited Governor Donnelly to lecture before it, and subse- 
quently made a public challenge for the advocates of Shakspere to 
pick out any man in the kingdom to meet Governor Donnelly in 
joint debate on. the ajiestion, in London. But the men who were 
ready to denounce the iconoclastic American at long range could 
not be induced to meet him on the platform. 

St. Albans. 

Governor Donnelly spent a great deal of his time at St. Albans, 
the former home of Francis Bacon. He "wandered, day by day, over 
the fields and through the woods about Gorhamsbury, accompanied 
by his son. Doctor Ignatius Donnelly, who was in London perfect- 
ing his medical education; and spent hours in the quaint old church 
of St. Michael, in the ancient city of St. Albans, where Bacon is 
buried, and where his statue is erected, representing the great i^hi- 
losopher and poet sitting in his chair, rapt in meditation. 

Debates in England. 

While Governor Donnelly was in England he made several 
speeches in London, Birmingham, etc., on the Bacon-Shakspere 
question, besides conducting debates at Cambridge University and 
Oxford University, on the same topic, with bright young men, stu- 
dents and graduates. The discussion at Cambridge was especially 
spirited. It lasted from 8 o'clock to 12, and would probably have 
continued all night but that the rules of the University required the 
students to retire at midnight, Mr. Donnelly opened and closed the 
debate, and some half-dozen others took part in it, equally divided 
between the adherents of Bacon and Shakspere, Some of these 
debaters were young men of twenty-five years of age, all of them 
were among the brightest of the rising generation; they were from 
all parts of the British Empire, even from Australia; and all of them 
had been studying The Great Cryptogram in the University library, 
and were perfectly informed on the subject of which it treated. The 
rules of the society required that at the close of every debate all the 
members present, a« they filed out through an ante-room, should 



118 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

write their names iu a book kept for tliat purpose, aud record how 
they V(jtcd on the question which had been under discussion. There 
were five hundred present on the night of the debate on the authorship 
of the plays, but the great majority of them became fo perplexed by 
the arguments in favor of Bacon that they refused to vote at all, 
and of the remainder who did vote one" hundred and twenty voted 
that Shakspere wrote the plays, and one Inmdred and one that 
Bacon wrote them ! 

This was considered a great victory for the hew theory, right 
in the heart of English conservatism, especially as one of the bigoted 
professors of the university had stated, three months before, that he 
" did not believe a single person, professor or student, could be 
found in Cambridge who believed in the absurd Baconian theory." 

In Edinburgh, Scotland, the interest in The Great Cryptogram 
was so intense that the newspapers were filled with discussions on the 
subject; and Mr. Donnelly was told that, iu the Advocates' Library, 
the applications,by the lawyers, were so numerous for the book, that it 
would be kept out of the library, in the hands ot readers, for six 
months to come. 

A Manchester paper has recently stated, as a generally recog- 
nized fact, that Shakspere is already cast down from his 
pedestal. 

W. F. C. Wigston, of England, the learned author of A New 
Study of Shakespeare and Bacon, Shakspere and the Bosicru- 
cians,^' wrote to Mr. Donnelly, after his return to America, under 
date of December 28th, 1888 : ' 

" Toil have written a wonderful l)ook. Everybody who takes it up is very 
soon converted, and 1 call it the most iconoclastic, idol-smashing piece of writing 
ever penned. Shakspere has been attacked before, but never really shaken on 
his pedestal with the public in England, nntil your work appeared. It has made a 
f/reat, silent and quick revolution.. The boys in the college at Eyde [Isle of Wight 
— Mr. Wigston's place of residence] divide and fight npon the subject; lectures 
are given pro and contra. What more would you have?" 

And at another time Mr. Wigston writes, to an American friend: 

" Mr. Donnelly may console himself for any temporary checks or annoyances. 
His name will bo 'as eternal as 'the god in art' whom he has vindicated from 
oblivion. Kewton's great discovery Avas by no means accepted till many years 
after his publication of it ; even Leibnitz opposed it. The greater the present oppo- 
sition the greater will be his ultimate triumph. I have made many discoveries 
Avhich go to confirm his cipher." 

Francis Bacon's Secret Society. 

Mrs. Henry Pott, a very learned and able lady, at whose house 
G-overnor Donnelly visited, while in London, has now in press a re- 
markable book, entitled Francis Bacon and His Secret Society 
(F. J. Schulte & Co., Chicago), which goes to show that Bacon was 
the real founder of the famous Rosicrucian Society, and that this was 
the parent organization out of which Freemasonry arose. There are 



CjEsar'S' column. no 

those wlio cliiiiii Dial the Ivosici-uciaii Society is yet alive, in Ger- 
many, and possessed of tbc seci'et history of liacou's life and works. 
Governor Donnelly is nowengaged npon a supplementary volume 
to The Great Cryptogram, which he l)i^lieves will forever end the 
Shaksperean contro\^ersy, and establish Francis Bacon's chiims to | 
the authorship. It will be entitled, The Cipher in the Plays and \ 
on the Tombstone. He says he will be able to prove, not only I 
the reality of the cipher in the plays, but also that the curious 
insci'iption which was ])laced over Shakspere's grave, at the time of 
his death, contains a statement, in Francis Bacon's biliteral cipher, 
that Francis liacon wrote the plays. The original inscription was in 
this exti-aordinary form: 

"Good Freud, for Jesus SAKE forbeare 
To diGG T-E Dust Enclo-Ased HE.Re. 
Blese be T-E Mau y sjiares T-ES Stoues, 
And curst be He y moves my Bones." 

" CiESAR'S COLUMX." 

The year 1889 may be set down as a great year in the annals of 
the struggle of the people of the whole world for their rights against 
the encroachments of capital, f^a- in that year was written a book 
which has become the Uncle Tom^s Cabin of the new revolution, 
— Ccesafs Column. 

Every work that deserves to live has its genesis. How did this 
wonderful book come to be written f What were the circumstances 
out of which it arose f 

The session of the Legislature of Minnesota of 1889 was the most 
rotten and corrupt ever held in the history of this rotten and corrupt 
commonwealth. The very man, W. D. V/ashburn, who was elected 
by it to the United States Senate, declared, to a New^ York news- 
paper reporter, that such was the case, although he afterward tried 
to disavow what he said; for, even with his limited intelligence, he 
perceived that the man who had triumphed in such a degraded body 
was, to say the least, under suspicion. Two great rival railroad 
systems, the Canadian and the Chicagoan, contended for supremacy, 
and their w^eapous were not argrtments, but greenbacks. There was 
a perfect holocaust of corruption. Bill King was fluttering around 
the battle like a foul bird of night. Men who had been bought by 
one side for $5,000 held on to the money and sold out to the other 
side for -$5,000 more; the men who made the last payment got the 
votes. The thing was boundless and unfathomable. Scarcely were 
the forms of decency preserved. One Senator, always impecunious, 
became dead drunk in one of the orgies of the time, and, as his 
friends were putting him to bed, several thousand dollars, in wads 
of bank notes, rolled out of his clothes. The houses of prostitution 
were the headquarters of the corruption. The newspapers were 
filled with charges and counter-charges. After Washburn was 
elected Senator, committees were appointed by the House and Sen- 



120 BTOGEAPHICAL. 

ate to investigate these allegations. A large mass of testimony was 
taken, by both committees; of the most damaging kind. When the 
Senate committee reported, the Senate turned the pubhc out and 
listened to the testimony in ''executive session/' and then sup- 
pressed it. The House had no " executive session," and it deliber- 
ately refused to permit the testimony to be read, and it never was 
made public until two years afterward, upon the demand of Gov- 
ernor Donnelly. But the corruption of that legislature was not con- 
fined to the Senatorial election. It covered everything. One Sena- 
tor charged, and offered to prove, that $25,000 had been paid to 
another Senator for his vote; and that dignified body did not think 
it worth while to investigate the charge. In the House, thirty 
members were said to have banded themselves together, and one 
man sold their votes, on all important questions, as Mr. Donnelly 
said, " like a bunch of asparagus." An universal outcry went up 
from the people of the State that it was the worst legislature that 
had ever been known in the world. 

Mr. Donnelly saw all this. He was not a member of the legis- 
lature. He received fifteen votes of Alliance men for U. S. Senator, 
but he recognized that in such a contest of money-bags he was out 
of the question. But he knew everything that was going on. He 
was appalled. He said to himself, if twenty-five or thirty years have 
produced these dreadful conditions, what will one hundred years 
yield us f Can civilization continue to exist under such conditions "i 
What is to arrest the forward movement to destruction ? Where is 
the remedy to be found ? Out of these reflections Ccesafs Column 
was born. Mr. Donnelly believes he was inspired to write the book. 
He says that while he was full of these gloomy reflections the words 
" Caesar's Column " were spoken, as it were, within his mind. He 
repeated them : " Caesar's Column ! What does that mean? What 
Csesar ? What Column f' And then the thought came to him that 
the phrase with its singular alliteration would make a good name for 
a novel. Why not a novel to show the dangers that hung over man- 
kind ? And so he proceeded step by step until he had built the 
famous novel around the name thus singularly suggested to him. 

He wrote the first chapter the night Washburn was elected 
Senator. A few weeks afterward he resumed the work in his home 
and finished it in about a month. 

He then tried to find a publisher. Eemember that this work 
has probably had a million readers in both hemispheres, in a little 
over one year ; that it has been translated into two languages ; and 
three editions of it have been pubhshed in England. And yet when 
Governor Donnelly submitted it to four leading publishers, in New 
York City, they each declined to print it. He then took it to a 
prominent Chicago house. That too declined it, and the head of 
the firm wrote Governor Donnelly a long letter, imploring him not 
to publish it, or, if he did, to put the price so high that it would be 



rjE SAB'S COLVMK. I'il 

heyoiid tho rencli of the cominon ix'oplc. At tliistinu- Mr. Doum-lly 
bej^au to think that his hook would iH'vcrsce thu Hght. He I't^alizcd 
that there was aheady in America a censorship of the press as com- 
plete and autocratic as that of Russia, and that even a note of warn- 
ing to the people, of the hell of destruction to which they were rush- 
ing, with headlong speed, must be suppressed. Fortunately for the 
world he at this time met a young man who was just starting into 
the business of book pablisliing— a bright, capable, clear-headed 
man, Mr. F. J. Schulte, of Chicago. He took the book, and it not 
only proved, from the very first, a great success, but it brought suc- 
cess to the publishing house which put it forth. It was the first of 
a long line of very popular books on industrial questions. 

Julian Hawthorne, himself a novelist of high rank, and the son 
of the illustrious author oX The Marble Faun and Thr House of the 
Sevep Gahles, said of Crrsar^s Column : 

'• It i.s oxcccdiug-lr intercstiug as a uarrativo and is ■written bv a man of 
thought, learniug and imagination. 1 consider it the best work of its class since 
Buhver's Coming Rure. I Avas impressed with the power of the book — the vivid- 
ness and strength Avith which the incidents of the tale are described and deveh^pcd. 
The plot is absor])ing. and yet nothing in it seems forced. The conception of the 
• Column ' is as original as its treatment is vigorous. There is no jjadding in the; 
book; the events are portrayed tersely and clearly. The analysis is reasonable 
and sag'acious, and the breadth of the "author's miiid, as well as his careful study 
of social conditions, is made evident by liis treatment of the discussions put into 
the mouths of his characters. Justice is done to each side." 

Cardinal Gibbons said: 

•• As an example of the highest literary form it deserves unstinted praise." 

The Episcopal Bishop of New York, Right Rev. Henry C. Potter, 
called it " a very extraordinary production. " 

Miss Frances E. Willard pronounced it a " Grabriel's trump." 
H. L. Loucks, president of the National Alliance, said : 

'• I Avas unable to lay it down until I had finished reading it. It should be 
read by every farmer in the land."' 

Milton George, the founder of the Farmers' Alliance, said : 
" Bellamy looks backAvard upon what is impossible as well as improbable. 
Ccesar^s Column looks forAvard to what is not only possible, but proba))le." 

George Cary Eggleston said, in the New York World: 
'•The book points out tendencies which actually exist and are in need of 
cure. It Avams us Avith vehemence and force of the necessity of guarding our lib- 
erties against the encroachments of monopoly and plutocracy, and of disarming 
corruption in government by every device that a vigilant ingenuity can supply." 

The Arena spoke of it as — 

"The most remarkable and thought-provoking novel that the disturbed in- 
dustrial and social conditions of the present have produced. . . . The purpose of 
this book is to arrest attention — to make men think wisely and act justly and Avith 
dispatch. The Avriter holds it as a signal of danger before the on-commg train. 
Will the warning be heeded ? "' 



122 mOGBAPHICAL. 

The great AY asbingtoii journal, PabJic Opinion, said: 

"The author writes with, tromeudous feeling and lireat iuiaii'iuati\-e jxjwer. 
The picture gives in startling colors what would be the case if many of our busi- 
ness methods and social tendencies were to more on unimpeded to their legitimate 
results. The book is a plea, and a striking one. Its plot is bold, its language is 
forceful, and the great uprising is given with terrible vividness." 

These are a few of a tliousand similar utterances in England 
and the United States. 

Mr. Donnelly was so conscious of the opposition of the Plutoc- 
racy that he did not, at first, dare to pubUsh Ccesar^s Column 
with his own name on the title-page, but put it forth under the nom 
de plume of " Edmund Boisgilbert, M. D.,"and the publishers 
allowed it to be believed that it was the work of a Chicago million- 
aire, and it was most amusing to see such villainous tools of mo- 
nopoly as the Fioneer-Press cringing before the wealth of its sup- 
posed author, and praising it to the skies ! 

The book has made an immense impression on the public mind, 
and is doing a great deal to warn thinking men and women of the 
dangers that impend over the country. 

"Doctor Huguet/' 

Governor Donnelly's second novel, promises to become as great a suc- 
cess OS his first. It is devoted to an entirely different subject, which it 
treats in an altogether different manner. His first novel was writ- 
ten to save men, of all races, from the loss of liberty and civihza- 
tion; the second is a philanthropic appeal to the hearts of man- 
kind in behalf of a poor and oppressed race, the negroes. 

Mr. Donnelly is Nominated eor GtOvernoe. 

On Mr. Donnelly's return from England he found that a Farm 
and Labor Convention had been called to meet in St. Paul the next 
day after he reached that city. He had taken no part in convening 
the convention, and the meeting was comi^osed of a number of 
workiugmen from the cities of St. Paid and Minneapohs, and but 
three or four farmers who represented all the rest of the great State. 
The gathering insisted on nominating Mr. Donnelly for Governor. 
He objected strenuously. He told them that the movement was 
premature; that there was no organization behind it, and no public 
sentiment to sustain it; and that it would be better to postpone 
action for a year or two, and not injure the good cause by making 
a fizzle of it. But some of the leaders were honest enthusiasts and 
some were cunning tricksters who desired to affect the action of the 
coming Republican State convention by Mr. Dr^nnelly's candidacy, 
and they assured him that he knew nothing of the feehng in the 
State, and that a fund of $3,000 could be readily raised to pay the 
expenses of speakers and for the distribution of printed matter and 
that he must run. He was then nominated unanimously and 
accepted, but with a reiteration of the views he had already im- 



Mil DONNELLY'S KELATIVES. Vi:\ 

pressed oil tlie leaders. Tbe event proved he was right. He started 
lo at oucLi on the campai<;u, and made a number of speeches and 
spent between two and three hundred dollars of his own funds, and 
then returned to St. Paul to find that the movement had utterlv 
collapsed; that, instead of the $3,000 proniised, thev had raised but 
$80 (one-fourth of which he had himself contributed) with which to 
canvass the whole State, and the candidate for Lieutenant-Governoi- 
insisted on getting off the ticket. The executive committee got 
together and withdrew the State ticket and resolved that the whole 
eflort of the new movement must be directed to electing members 
of the Legislature to secure needed legislation. And so Governor Don- 
nelly's campaign came to an end, very much to his disgust, for he is 
the last man in the world to give up a contest, and he had wasted two 
weeks of hard work and, for him, a considerable sum of money. I 
refer to these facts because they were afterwards made the subject 
of unjust comments, by his enemies. 

Mr. Donnelly's* Relatives. 

The reader will probably remember the article in the New York 
Tribune of June 20, 1866, which I quoted heretofore, from the pen of 
George Alfred Townsend, which, speaking of Mr. Donnelly, conclud- 
ed with these words: " He belongs to a singularly gifted familv." 

It seems to me that it might be proper, before concluding this 
biography, to say a few words as to Mr. Donnelly's immediate fam- 
ily—that is, his sisters. They all reside in their native city, Phil- 
adelphia, and they fully deserve Gath's words of praise. 

Some years since, when Professor Maguire was piincipal of the 
Philadelphia Central High School, a gentleman from the West, who 
was visiting the school, asked the Professor who was the most intel- 
ligent young lady of his acquaintance in the Quaker Citv. Prof. 
Maguire replied that the two most intellectual women of "^the city 
were two sisters, of the name of Donnelly. Further inquiry diclosed 
that they were the sisters of Ignatius Donnelly. 

Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly. 

Mr. Donnelly's sister, Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly, of Philadelphia, 
is a very distinguished poetess. She has written some of the sweet- 
est verses in our language. Her " Monk Gabriel's Vision " has been 
rated by eminent critics far above a poem on the same subject written 
by Longfellow. 

The Philadelphia Press, speaking of the '' Vision of the Monk 
Gabriel," said : 

" Its warmth of imagination, artistic vigor and tenderness of color and ex- 
pression make it glow lik-e an old painting beside the cold marble of Longfellow's 
poem on the same subject." 

The Minneapolis Tn7w/2e pronounced it '' a companion piece to 
Whittier's ' Brother of Mercy' — Piero Luca." 

The famous Dr. Mackenzie declared that Miss Donnelly's work 



124 BIOGnAPHICAL. 

contaiued '^ some of the best poetry published in this or any other 
country for many a long day/' 

The New Orleans Morning Star said : 

"The North lionizes Longfellow, the West pays homage to Joaquin Miller, 
the South is proud of Father Eyan, but the East may name Eleanor C Donnelly as 
one in all respects equal to these poets, and whose writings will live by the side of 
theirs as long as the English language is spoken." 

I regret that the limitations of this biography prevent me 
from quoting ^^ The Monk GabrieFs Vision." I give, however, as a 
specimen of her style, the following poem: 

^' Missing.'^ 

In the cool, sweet hush of a wooded nook, 

Where the May-buds sprinkle the green old ground, 
And the wind, and the birds, and the limpid brook 

Murmur their dreams with a drowsy sound, 
"Who lies so still in the plushy moss, 

"With his pale cheek pressed to a breezy pillow, 
Concealed where the light and shadows cross. 

Through the flickering fringe of the willow ? 
Who lies, alas ! 
So still, so chill, in the whispering grass ? 

A soldier, clad in the zouave dress, 

A bright-haired man, with his lips apart. 
One hand thrown up o'er his frank, dead face. 

And the other clutching his pulseless heart, 
Lies there in the shadows cool and dim ; 

His musket brushed by a trailing bough, 
A careless grace in each quiet limb, 

And a wound on his manly brow — 
A wound, alas ! 
Whose dark clots blood the pleasant grass. 

The violets peer from their dusky beds. 

With a tearful dew in their great blue eyes ; 
The lilies quiver their shining heads, , 

Their pale lips full of sad surprise. 
And the lizard darts through the glistening fern, 

And the squirrel rustles the branches hoary ; 
Strange birds fly out, with a cry, to burn 

Their wings in the sunset glory, 
While the shadows pass 
O'er the quiet face on the dewy grass. 

God pity the bride who waits at home. 

With her lily cheeks and her violet eyes, 
Dreaming the sweet old dream of love, 

While the lover is walking in paradise ! 
God strengthen her heart as the days go by, 

And the long, drear nights of her vigil follow ; 
Nor bird, nor moon, nor whispering wind 

May breathe the tale of the hollow ! 
Alas ! Alas ! 
The secret is safe with the woodland grass. 

Miss Donnelly has published thirteen volumes of poems, and I 
understand a collected edition of her most popular writings is about 



ME, DONNELLY AT HOME. 125 

to be put forth by F. J. Schult>e & Co., of Chicago. All Mr. 
Donnelly's sisters are *' book-makers," artists and musicians; they 
have published a number of volumes, m.any of them translations 
from the French, Italian and German. They are, all of them, very 
intellectual and scholarly women. 

Governor Donnelly had but one brothei- — John Gavin Donnelly. 
He was at one time Collector of Internal Revenue in Philadelphia. 
He migrated to Minnesota, and settled on a farm near Donnelly, 
where he died, September 9th, 1889. He was a man of a very 
modest; retiring disposition, but of excellent mind and great kind- 
ness of heart, and beloved by all who knew him. 

Mr. Donnelly's uncle, his father's youngest brother, John C. 
Donnelly, of Fintona, is famous in the north of Ireland as a most 
attractive and eloquent speaker; and crowds gather from many 
miles around whenever it is known that he is about to make an ad- 
dress. He is greatly respected where he lives, and has held several 
important local offices. 

Me. Donxelly at Home. 

Like many others engaged in public work, we have been in 
many homes, but never in one where the charm of home-life ap- 
peared more exquisitely realized than in that literary farm -home at 
Nininger, on the Mississippi, three miles above the city of Mastings, 
Minnesota. The quiet humor of the man, whose famous sobriquet 
of " The Sage of Nininger " will outhve the age ; the tenderness of 
speech, the affection unspoken and yet ever expressed, made every 
visit of ours one of great delight and of pleasant memory. One 
who has witnessed the Titanic intellectual strength of Ignatius 
Donnelly, in keeping an entire hostile State Senate at bay, for ten 
days at a time, with a rhetorical vehemence and a mastery of ag- 
gressive eloquence unprecedented, can hardly imagine the peaceful 
quiet that marks his home as one of the happiest on earth. 

A newspaper correspondent, Mr. James Sullivan, sent by one 
of the Chicago papers, the Tribune, to interview Mr. Donnelly, at his 
home, thus describes him : 

" A man of wonderful vitality and energy, Mr. Donnelly belongs to that class, 
by no means a large one, who never know when they are beaten. His exhaustless 
energy and elasticity really amount to that ' vigor" so highly prized by the Hindoo 
Mencius, and described by him as being ' supremely great, and in the highest de- 
gree unbending.' He is a little below medium height, and deep-chested, while his 
tine head is set, Douglas-like, above his l)road shoulders, upon the least possible 
length of neck. His face is ruddy and smooth-shaven, and his expression is the 
very essence of brightness and good feeling*, and when he speaks his clear, blue 
eyes sparkle or grow humid Avith every shade of feeling. In manner Mr. Donnelly 
unites the qiiiet'of the cultivated man of the East, the forcefnlness of the \7estern 
man, and the chivalrous courtesy which distinguishes the Southern gentleman. 
He is really pleasing to a charm socially, and in his own home, as the affable, en- 
tertaining "host, is the embodiment of gracious a^reeableness," 



126 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

Another correspondent writes : 

"1 believe that in all the bitter political strifes to which Mr. Donnelly has. 
been a party —and they have not been a few — there has not been a sustained as- 
sertion agamst his morality, nor to the effect that he has not, when elected, reprc-- 
sented his constituents honestly.'' 

The celebrated Prof. Thomas Davidson, of Orange, N. J., who' 
visited Mr. Donnelly in 1887, as the representative of the New York. 
World, thus describes his home and himself: 

" Mr. Donnelly had sent a carriage to meet us, and we were soon driving vig- 
orously along the h'ish western bank of the Mississippi. In about half an hour we 
reached Mr. Donnelly's residence, a roomy, old-fashioned, frame building, standing 
in the midst of a large rural garden on a bluff' of the river, and affording a superb 
vievv' of its course both above and below. The spot seemed altogether suitable for 
'a quiet scholar desirous of uninterrupted leisure to devote to study. Everything 
looked modest, simple and durable, betokening competency without wealth, and 
refinement without luxury or show. At the garden gate 1 was met by Mr. Don- 
nelly, who seemed made for his surroundings, and who greeted me in a most 
cordial and unafi'ected manner. I had sharpened my eyes to discover in him the 
deluded crank or the deluding fraud. I felt pretty sure that the 'lirst sight' 
would reveal either the one or the other to me. and it was only when I utterly 
failed to hnd in the man a trace of cither that I became aware, (to my shame), with 
how much prejudice I had come laden. In Mr. Donnelly's person and demeanor I 
could lind nothing that was not perfectly simple and genuine. His quietness and 
ireniality at once disarmed me. 1 was forced to believe that he was an honest man, 
and during my intercourse with him I did not alter this opinion for a moment. 1 
could not find a trace of mystery about him, or of any desire to impose upon me. 
. . His smile shows a man who delights in fun, while his whole expression is 
keen, intelligent and kindly."' 

Another correspondent, the celebrated Mrs. Antoinette V. Wake- 
man, thus writes to the Chicago Times : 

" A short way up from the Mississippi River, embowered in a natural grove of 
oaks, stands Mr. Donnelly's broad, roomy house, which is encircled by piazzas and 
surrounded by broad grounds that give it an air of ample hospitality. The brood- 
ing stillness about the place is broken only by the song of birds and the occasional 
puff" of engine and beat of great wheels on the placidly flowing water, as a steamer 
plies up or down. The wasion-way leading to this retired spot, which is situated 
fully a quarter of a mile from the main country road, is quite overgrown with the 
thick clinffing knot-grass. As we approached our carriage wheels revolved noise- 
lessly along this truly velvety way, and the place seemed to be quite away from all 
the world and its bustle and noise': while the view from the approach, and the hovise 
itself, of the distant towns of Hastings and Prescott, the great, green, billowy bluffs 
the woodland, and the opposite tawny limestone cliff, pine-crowned_, over all ot 
which huno- the diaphanous veil of soft blue haze which almost continually rests 
above the distance of all Minnesota landscapes, was a picture of marvelous beauty. 
His farm supplies the needs of life without personal effort on his part, while 
the*i-e is still the ' somewhat to be desired,' which is ever a Avholesome stimulant to 
effort; and the profound and charming retirement of his home gives ideal oppor- 
tunity for literary work." 

Mr. Donnelly's Religion. 

During all his life time, since he came to man's estate, Mr. 
Donnelly has never opened his mouth to make any statement as to 
his rehgious views. As far back as 1855, when he was nominnted 
for the Legislature, iti Philadelphia, he was denounced in public 



ME. DOimELLY'S MELIGION. 127 

handbills, as an " iofideL " Time and again he has been assailed in 
Minnesota, on the one hand as a heretic and renegade, and on the 
other as a Catholic and Jesuit. Even Elihn Washburne, in 1868, 
said he was " false to his religion," —implying that Mr. Donnelly 
had been a Catholic and had left his faith : — a strange charge for a 
Protestant, like Washburne, a behever in the right of private 
judgment, to make, as a matter of opprobrium. It is to Mr. 
Donnelly's honor that he has never made any appeal to race or 
sectarian prejudices of any kind. He preferred to suffer political 
unpopularity rather than say one word about his religious belief 
which mignt affect the opinions of others, or be interpreted as 
reflecting upon any creed. But we learn from members of his 
family that Elihu Washburne's charge was without any foundation : 
— Mr. Donnelly had never been a member of the Catholic church, 
or of any other church. He never received even the rite of confirma- 
tion, which is administered in early youth. He inherited his frame 
of mind upon this question from his father. His creed Avas the creed 
of Micah: ^' And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
iustly and love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " But 
"while Mr. Donnelly "is as independent in religion as in politics, 
he has felt that it was wrong to shake any man's faith in the 
restraining influences of the gospel; and in his lecture, in reply 
to Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, entitled " The Mistakes of Inger- 
soll in Literature and Religion," he denounces him strongly 
for unsettling the beliefs of men in their old creeds, while giving 
them nothing in exchange except barren agnosticism. He declared 
that all relig-ions conserve morahty and are a restraint on our nat- 
ural weakness and wickedness, and hence that any religion is better 
than none. His books show that he has the profoundest respect for 
Christianity and the most unshaken belief in the immortality of the 
soul and the existence of an intelligent First Cause in the Universe. 
In fact, the tone of all his writings is strongly religious ; he is not a 
"materiahst; " he believes that man is a spirit, dwelling, for a 
time, in a shell of flesh, and that God is overruling the aftairs of 
earth for the good of mankind. He is, therefore, a Christian in the 
broadest sense of the word, while not accepting the dogmas of any 
particular denomination. Although he entertains his own views 
upon many questions, he has never written or spoken a word in all 
his life that could wound the religious feelings of any man or lessen 
his respect for virtue. He believes that each individual has just 
that kind and grade of religion which is fitted to his mental condi- 
tion and stage of development. I remember to have heard him say, 
in one of his Alliance speeches : 

" When I die and present myself at the golden gate, I do not 
expect St. Peter to ask me, ' What is your opinion upon this or that 
dogma, or this or that translation of such a (4reek or Hebrew textf ' 
But I expect him to thrust his head out of his window and roar 



l:io BIOGBAFHIC^L. 

at me, iu a voice of thunder : ' You miserable little cuss, what did 
you ever do, while on earth, to help your fellow man"? What did you 
ever do to punish the robbers of the people and lift up the fallen ? ' 
And I fear, my friends, that if I cannot satisfactorily answer that 
question, I will never play on a golden harp, even if my shroud is 
stuffed full of receipts for pew-rents and certificates of good charac- 
ter from all the clergymen in Minnesota. " 

Mr. Donxelly's Chaeacter. 

At the close of the session of the Legislature of 1887, the St. 
Paul Dispatch, then and now the ably-edited leader of the Republi- 
can party of Minnesota, proceeded to announce Mr. Donnelly's ruin, 
and to read him out of the party. It is the most singular and at 
the same time complimentary indictment ever framed against a 
public man, as an excuse for retiring him to private life. 

Mr. Donnelly was elected to the House that year, from his own 
county, as an Independent or AlUance man, indorsed bytheEepub- 
licans; and when it came to voting for United States Senator, the 
Independents having no candidate, he voted for the Eepublican 
candidate. The Kepublicans claimed that he had turned Republi- 
can again, but he insisted that he was still an Independent. The 
Dispatch thus refers to this episode : 

' ' ^o man had ever entered anew upon a political career vyith brighter pros- 
pects than had Mr. Donnelly at the opening of the present session. The arms of 
the Republican party had been opened to receive him, with a joy that no returning 
political prodigal had ever before experienced. In a speech of the rarest power and 
eloquence, in the Republican legislative caucus, he placed himself squarely upon 
the platform of that party and justified his errantry in the past. He was at once 
the prophet and the leader of the farming element in the State." 

But he fell from grace. The Dispatch continues its remarkable 
eulogy, suggesting as a cause for his " fall " his faithfulness to the 
people : 

'' The bent of Mr. Donnelly's mind and sympathies undoubtedly leads him to 
the championship of the cause of the common people. It is ingrained in him that 
he should oppose every form of public policy which he might believe to lead toward 
the curtailment of individual right. In the many digressions which he has made 
from the path of party fealty, the people have involuntarily made allowance the 
most liberal for this manifest disposition of his. They have marked his signal tal- 
ents. Few of them there are who have not, at one time or other, fallen under the 
spell of his magic eloquence. Intellectually there is no man that has appeared 
among us, perhaps, who can be said to be his peer. A scholar the most profound, 
a debater the most skillful, a publicist trained and educated ; still this singular man 
has willfully stamped upon his own character the brand of political failure." 

Why ? He was not dishonest. The Dispatch continues : * 
" For upward of a quarter of a century Ignatius Donnelly has been prominent 
in the public life of Minnesota. It may be truly said, how^ever, that during that 
period the enmities which he has aroused have been more numerous and enduring, 
and have had a more vital bearing upon his career, than any friendships which 
may have sprung either from his personal good qualities or from that admiration 
which his grand talents could not help but evoke. Enemies and friends alike 
unite in conceding to him that the duties of every public station which Mr. Don- 



CONCLUDING liEMABKS. 129 

nelly lias over held have been disehai-gcd faithfully and with ability. That this is 
the public verdict the people of Minnesota have ijorne testimony 'in the many ex- 
alted positions to which they have successively called him." 

Who were these enemies he had made, whose opposition liad 
such a vital bearing on his career ? They were the men who were 
profiting by the plunder of the people. Why, let us ask, had he in- 
curred their enmity ? Because he would neither betray nor deceive 
the people. And therefore, despite all his honesty, industry and 
ability, to which the Bispatch bears sucli ample testimony, he is 
branded as a " political failure," and the leading Republican organ 
of the State reads him out of the party. And in doing so it throws 
a flood of light on the character of the man it proscribes, and the 
character of the age and country in which he lives. 

Yes, it is " ingrained " in him to defend the oppressed, and it is 
'' ingrained " in him to advocate the same ideas in olfice that he did 
before he got the office. And there is no human power that can 
corrupt him, or intimidate him, or cajole him. He will fight as 
bravely alone as with ten thousand at his back. I well remember 
last winter, when the great battle was on over the usury question 
and the repeal of the forfeiture clause, Avhen his allies, and some 
even of his own men, deserted him, and when he was the subject of 
savage attacks without number on the floor and in the newspapers — 
I well remember the fierce determination with which he said : 

"■ The Eepublicans may desert me, but I shall stand firm. The 
Democrats may desert me, but I shall stand firm. The Alliance 
may desert me, but I shall stand firm. You may hack the flesh ofl:* 
these bones, but the very bones will continue to fight for justice." 

We know of nothing equal to that since Martin Luther declared 
that he would go to the Diet of Worms " though there were as many 
devils there as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses." 

Indeed, it might be said that Governor Donnelly is the strang- 
est and most extraordinary combination of fierce determination 
with amiability and magnanimity that was ever heard of. He will 
fight the whole world in arms, but he will not strike his worst 
enemy when he is down.^ Indeed, he is oftentimes too good- 
natured for his own good; and part of his failure in public life has 
been due to the fact that he would trust, and take to his heart, those 
who had once proved themselves unworthy of his confidence, but 
who came to him with appeals to his mercy. His treatment of Bill 
King illustrates this feature of his character. 

Concluding Remarks. 

It will probably be expected that, as usual at the end of a 
biography, there should be some summing up of the character of 
the subject of the narrative, in particulars other than those I have 
just spoken of; but I do not feel able to undertake such a task. If 
I attempted it my readers would, I fear, conclude that my natural 



130 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

feelings, as a friend, had colored my judgment. Moreover it seems 
to me that any one who has read the foregoing biography, or who 
will read the extracts which follow in the body of this work, will 
have formed a fairly accurate judgment for himself. I would there- 
fore only call attention to one or two points. 

In the first place it is very apparent that Mr. Donnelly is a very 
composite character, with a great many sides to his mind. 

It is usually the rule that a ready man is not a profound man ; 
an orator is seldom a writer; and high imagination and close reason- 
ing and penetration of mind seldom go together. But it seems to 
me all these qualities will be conceded, by all men, to the subject of 
this sketch. 

An amusing article appeared, not long since, in the St. Paul 
Globe, the leading Democratic paper of Minnesota, which considers 
Grovernor Donnelly's composite character from a hostile standpoint: 

" Some people liave compared Ignatius Donnellj to Cicero. . . . This is en- 
tirely unfair. When it comes to talking, Cicero is not to be named with Donnelly. 
Cicero was wordy, prosy, ornate and elaborate. Donnelly scintillates with the 
rarest of prismatic brilliancy ; he is as witty as Lucifer, who made the angels 
laugh around the glassy sea ; he is as fluent as an Itasca County brook-stream on a 
July day; he is as original and as full of joyous surprises, terrifying abysses and 
overshadowing summits as are the Peruvian Andes. Ignatius Donnelly is a great 
orator. 

"Donnelly is not like Cicero in action either. Ceesar and Pompey and Mark 
Antony, and other ward politicians of ancient Rome, snubbed Cicero, and made 
him whimper. Finally, he got to be such a bore that they cut off his head, or some 
other vital part of him. Just fancy anybody's snubbing Ignatius Donnelly ! Who 
ever heard Ignatius Donnelly whimper? Who, in the whole wide world, would 
dare say that he had ever been anything but interesting and effective ? He is as 
earnest and persistent as Charles Stewart Parnell. He can exist without political 
pabulum as long as Succi.went without food, and then come up smiling, sleek and 
fat, as though he had been all the time fattening on the fees of the best office in 
Kamsey County. He is as steadfast and brave, in defeat and disaster, as Marcus 
Aurelius. He is as industrious and many-sided as William Ewart Gladstone. Ho 
can thrust and parry with the grace of an Orlando. He is as subtle as Jay Gould ; 
as masterful as Thomas B. Reed ; and as crafty as Macchiavelli. Donnelly is not 
at all like Cicero in action. He is an amazing man." 

His Keadt Wit. 

I give a good many specimens of his quick wit in the following 
extracts. I would call attention to but one or two more at this 
time. 

The Waterways Convention of the Northwestern States, which 
met a few years ago in in St. Paul, was called, ostensibly, in the in- 
terest of the producers, as against the exactions of the railroad cor- 
porations; but these latter interests, as usual, packed the conven- 
tion with railroad attorneys, who were determined that nothing 
should be done that would conflict with the interest-sof their employers. 
Mr. Donnelly was invited to attend by Governor Hubbard, as a promi- 
nent representative of the producing class. He tried to get some 
resolutions passed looking to reduced railroad charges^ because, as he 



" GOT 'EM AGIN, BY THUNDER.'' 131 

argued, it would be useless to improve the great waterways, at 
public expense, if the productions of the country were eaten up by 
exorbitant railroad charges before they could reach those water- 
ways. The railroad lawyers combined to table his resolutions and 
put him down. One gentleman, of tliis class, a very able, and per- 
sonally a very worthy man, now deceased, got up, and, referring 
to Governor Donnelly's resolutions, and desiring to intimate that 
they were foreign to the business of the convention, said : 

" Mr. Chairman, I move you that we also indorse the new 
revision of the Old Testament." 

Governor Donnelly sprang to his feet, as quick as a flash, and 
said : 

'' And, Air. Chairman, I move that we especially indorse that 
verse of the Old Testament which says: ^And the ox knoweth his 
owner, and the ass his master's crib.' '' 

The convention " took " at once, and the roar of laughter and 
applause that followed lasted for several minutes, while the railroad 
attorney sat down pale as a sheet, and looking as if he had been 
hit on the head with a club. 

Another attorney, who sat in the gallery, and whose sympathies 
were not at all with Mr. Donnelly's views, and who, when excited, 
is an especially profane man, turned to a friend sitting next to him, 

and, swearing fiercely, said: " To think that that d d fool had 

not sense enough to keep out of the claws of that d d wild- 
cat!" 

Another story is told of him that illustrates his rare quickness 
of mind. 

He was making a speech during the war, when party feeling 
ran high, to an outdoor meeting at Stillwater, standing on a piazza, 
between two posts. Some political opponent, in the background, 
hurled a hard, solid head of cabbage at him, and it struck one of 
the posts beside him with great force. He stooped and picked it 
up. 

'' Gentlemen," he said, " some Democrat has flung his head up 
here. I only asked him for his ears, and, lo! he has given me his 
whole head ! " 

Then, turning the mangled side of the vegetable to the audi- 
enjce, he continued : 

" Look at the fine, intelligent cast of that countenance ! The man 
that head belongs to believes, I have no doubt, that slavery is 
ordained of God, and that the best way to prosecute the war is to 
stop fighting. " 

" Got 'em Agin, by Thunder.'' . ; . 

During the Senatorial contest of 1S89, Governor Donnelly had 
rooms in the Merchants' Hotel, St. Paul. On a cabinet, in his re- 
ception room; was one of those curious Japanese dragons, made of 



132 BIOGRAPHICAL. 

Xmpier mache, all eyes and horns, a horrible-looking object. Among 
the Governor's callers, every day, was an amiable young fellow, 
whose great weakness was drink. He made himself rather a bore to 
the Governor and his friends, for be was seldom sober. 

One day he happened to roll his eyes up until they encountered 
the terrible-looking creature on the cabinet. 

" Good God! " he cried, rising to his feet, " what's that? " 

'' What's what? " asked the Governor, quietly. 

*' Why, that thing there ! " pointing to it. 

" There's nothing there," said the Governor. 

" What! nothing tbere? " 

" Not a'thing. Is there, gentlemen? " asked the Governor, ap- 
pealing to those present. 

They entered into the spirit of the joke, and protested that 
there was not a thing to be seen on the cabinet. 

The young man's face grew very solemn ; he grabbed his hat 
and struck a bee-line for the door, muttering as he went, " Got 'em 
agin, by thunder ! " 

He never returned. He remained sober for six months. 

A Difference in the Size of Vessels. 

One day in the State Senate, 'a very important question was up 
for discussion, and one of the Senators, a man of very mediocre 
ability, proposed that all speeches be limited to five minutes each. 
A discussion followed. 

" Why, " said he, '^ Mr. President, I can say all I have to say, 
on any question, in five minutes. " 

" Mr. President," said Governor Donnelly, " it takes longer to 
empty a five-gallon jug than a pint bottle. " 

The motion was lost. 

Hic Oeiginality. 

On the other hand, in Governor Donnelly's literary works we find 
evidences of the deepest and most original thought. Who, before him, 
ever conceived that the destruction of Plato's Atlantis was identical 
with the Flood of Noah? Who, before him, ever saw the relationship 
between the alphabets of the old and new world? And in Ragna- 
rok we have the most startling and original conceptions as to the 
origin of the Drift, and a linking together of Legends and geological 
and astronomical facts which has carried conviction to thousands of 
minds. Who, before him, ever conceived the idea that an absolute 
arithmetical cipher existed in the Shakespeare plays, aud saw the 
real nature of Bacon's hints about a cipher narrative infolded in an 
external narrative ? ' 

His Coiteage. 

In 1887, while Governor Donnelly was a member of the Mm- 
nesota HousC; he proved, in the most striking way, his possession of 



HIS INDirSTRY. I33 

extraordinary nerve. The State Capitol building had been vcn-y 
poorly constructed; an immense weight of iron, thousands of tons 
was piled on the roof, which was insufficiently held up by the walls' 
One day a tremendous crowd gathered to witness the fight between 
the temperance and anti-temperance elements over the high license 
law — every seat and every foot of space was occupied. Governor 
Donnelly was acting as speaker ^^ro tern. One of the officers of the 
House came and whispered to him that the floor was settling the 
walls cracking, and that in another moment the ponderous 'roof 
might come crashing down. Already great cracks appeared rin-ht 
over his head. A sudden movement of the dense mass of people 
might bring down death and ruin upon them. Governor Donnelly 
rose, and, with a smiling face, said that in all legislative buildings 
* the dead-pomt of danger " was always inside the door, on the 
floor ot the House, and that there were too many people present- 
and he requested those in the galleries to move out. He did it so 
jovially that the crowd quietly and reluctantlv withdrew. Many 
laughed and kept their seats, for they could not believe there was 
any danger. Then he urged those in the lobby to withdraw; and 
when they had done so, he called the attention of the House to the 
cracks m the wall and ceiling, and the frightened House instantly 
adjourned. The St. Paul Globe said, the next day: 

" The value of having a man with a cool head and steady nerve at the helm 
was never better illustrated than yesterday, when Mr. Donnelly filled the speaker's 
chair during the impending crisis of a falling building. It was Mr. DoSnelly's 
reassuring manner, m requesting the crowd to withdraw, that averted a stampede 
which would assuredly have been a thing of horrible fatality at that crisis. The 
provabilities are that a very slight vibration of the floor would have hastened the 
spreading ot the walls, and the hundreds of men and women assembled in the 
House ot Kepresentatives would have been buried in the wreck. People who at 
rh3 polite request ot Acting Speaker Donnelly, quietly withdrew, laughinj? o'ver 
what they supposed was a little practical joke to get them out of the room, so as 
to give the members ot the Legislature a better chance to spread themselves on the 
higb license bill, little realized the imminent peril which environed them, or how 
much thev owe to Mr. Donnelly for averting what otherwise might have been the 
most dreadful catastrophe of modern times. Mr. Donnelly's way of thinkino- on 
many public matters, is not our way of thinking, but the Globe is alwavs ready to 
render credit where credit is due. And so it is we write it down, that for a cool 
head and steady nerve Ignatius Donnelly takes the palm, and deserves praise for 
his heroism m the face of danger. " r ^ ^ 

The hall of the House could not be again occupied until great 
pillars were erected to hold up the roof, and after the adjournment 
of the Legislature the whole thing had to be reconstructed. 

His Industry. 

Governor Donnelly's industry is something phenomenal. It is 
endless and absolutely tireless. He never rests during his waking 
hours. He works regulariy from twelve to fourteen hours a day, and 
he boasts that he is as fresh at midnight as he was in the morning 
Nor does he force himself to this industry. It is natural to him' 



^*^ 



134 BIOGBAPHICAL. 

He could not do otherwise. One of his brother senators called 
him "a steam-engine." His greatest delight is in his library, and 
he never leaves his home except reluctantly; and under the pres- 
sure of his sense of public duty. 

His Habits. 

He has been all his life abstemious and temperate in his habits. 
He has never used whisky or tobacco. Of late years he does not 
drink tea or coffee, believing, with Thiers, that they are nerve 
poisons and destructive of digestion. The result of his mode of life 
Is that, while nearly sixty years of age, he looks like a man of forty- 
five, and can perform, without effort, an amount of work that would 
kill many a man of forty. 

The Futuke. 

As we intimated when we began this biography, we do not 
think Governor Donnelly's career is at an end, or even near its close. 
He is in the full flush of extraordinary vigor. Even as we write, a 
new novel from his pen, Doctor Huguet, is, as we have shown, at- 
tracting the attention of the world; and he has, he says, hterary 
work enough blocked out to occupy him for months and years to 
come; so that, even if the Plutocracy are able, as is very probable, 
to keep him out of national pubhc life, as they have done for the last 
twenty-three years, he will be neither idle nor useless. 

In Conclusion. 

We conclude these pages with many apologies. They were 
written hurriedly, in the midst of the exactions of newspaper life 
and many pressing duties, and we offer them simply as a rough and 
imperfect throwing together of facts, and a mere sketch of the 
life of a man in whom many people are to-day greatly interested. 

We hope to recur to the subject hereafter, under more 
favorable circumstances. 



ADDENDA 



The Last Act in the Drama. 

SINCE I prepared the foregoing pages of this biography, some- 
thing has happened which has attracted renewed attention to 
Governor Donnelly,, on both sides of the Atlantic; namely, his action 
for damages against thQ Pioneer -Press newspaper for libel. 

Although every page of the preceding record has shown him 
constantly battling for riglit and justice, against wealth and power; 
w^hile facts and official documents have proved, beyond controversy, 
that his enemies were a gang of public plunderers and desperate 
thieves, nevertheless, as if by the very irony of fate, this champion 
of the people has been forced to defend himself, in the last few 
months, against the charge of the corruptionists, that he has been, 
or rather was, twenty-Uvo or tweiitif -three years ago, a corrupt and 
dishonest man; and tliey have sought to estabUsh the truth of his 
charge by the testimony of no less a person than that dreadful 
character — Bill King — whom we saw indicted for perjury by the 
grand jury of the District of Columbia, and flying to Canada for 
shelter from the officers of his outraged country. 

A Peculiar Kind of Witnesses. 

I do not propose to defend Governor Donnelly, in much detail, 
against these attacks. They are too ffimsy. They are already 
answered by the verdict of a jury in his favor, for if that jury had 
believed that any one of the counter-charges made against him was 
sustained by the evidence, they would undoubtedly have given their 
decision in favor of his persecutors. But the end is not yet. Other 
suits are pending, and, I learn, still others are to be instituted. All 
the lion in Governor Donnelly is aroused, and his assailants will get 
enough of it before he consents to stop. 

It is sufficient to say now that during the last twenty- three 
years Governor Donnelly has been almost constantly in public life, 
in Minnesota; he has served in seven sessions of the House and 
Senate of the State; he has been at all times a public leader, with 
a large influence and following. If he had been corrupt he could 
readily have sold out a score of times to the corporations and the 



136 ADDENDA. 

rings. But during all that period not a single charge of wrong- 
doing is brought against him. His enemies concede that his career 
has been spotless. He testified in the course of the libel suit that in 
1887 he was offered $100,000 to betray the AUiance and stop his 
fight against the railroad corporations. And, strange to say, the 
very man, (a fellow by the name of Rhoads), who made this offer, 
and pressed Governor Donnelly to accept it, and go with him and 
see the leading railroad magnate of the State, and close up the 
trade, took the stand and swore that Governor Donnelly's character 
as an honest legislator was bad! And yet he admitted that Gov- 
ernor Donnelly, in a pubhc meeting in Hastings, where he, Ehoads, 
lived, had publicly charged, in 1890, that Rhoads had made him 
that offer, and had challenged him, RhoadS; to meet him before the 
public, at a subsequent meeting, and deny the charge if he dared; 
and that he, Rhoads, had never accepted that challenge. 

A Defeated Candidate Testifieth! 

Another man — one R. C. Libby, of Hastings — also swore that 
Governor Donnelly's character was "bad," especially among his 
friends and neighbors, in Dakota County. Mr. Donnelly's attorney 
— Mr. C. Welhngton — then asked him the following brief and 
pointed questions : 

Wellington. " Did yoii run against Governor Donnelly last fall for the State 
Senate in Dakota County ? " 

Lihhy. "Yes." 

Wellington. " On what ticket ? " 

Libby. " The Democratic ticket." 

Wellington. " The county is usually Democratic by about 500 majority, I be- 
lieve 1" 

Libby. "Yes." 

Wellington. " There was a Eepublican candidate also in the field ? " 

Libby. "Yes." 

Wellington. " And Grovemor Donnelly beat both of you, by large majorities ? " 

Libby. " Yes." 

Wellington. ' ' And you say his character is bad and the people have no con- 
fidence in him ? " 

Libby. "Yes." 

Wellington. " That's all." 

And the obliterated Libby retired, amid shouts and roars of 
laughter, from judges, attorneys, jury and audience. 

Another witness, named Rich, swore that he lived quite near 
Governor Donnelly, and that his reputation for political honesty was 
bad among his immediate neighbors. Then came the following 
cross- examaination : 

Wellington. ' ' You say Governor Donnelly's character is bad among his neigh- 
bors in his own township ? " 
Bich. "Yes." 

Wellington. " "What township is that ? " 
Hick. " Mninger Township." 

Wellington. " He has lived there thirty- five years, hasn't he ? " 
Rich. '" I believe so." 



HASTINGS AND DAKOTA RAILWAY CHAUGE. 137 

Wellington. " Now, was uot tho voto of thnt towuship almost unanimously 
in favor of Governor Donnelly when ho ran for State Senator last fall, while the 
rest of his party ticket had but a third of tho vote '? " 

Bich. " I believe it was." [Great laughter and applause.] 

lu fact, the immense crowd in the court-room was so strongly 
in favor of Governor Donnelly, even in that hostile city of Minneap- 
olis, that they repeatedly broke forth in tremendous applause when- 
ever his brilliant counsel, Mr. Wellington, said a word in his favor, 
until the presiding judge threatened to clear the court-room if the 
interruptions continued. 

The Hastings and Dakota Railway Charge. 

One WiUiam G. Le Due, a personal and political enemy of Gov- 
ernor Donnelly, and now a Republican office-holder and tool of the 
Phitocrats, swore that in 1867 Governor Donnelly made a demand on 
him for $10,000, for services rendered in procuring a land-grant, as 
member of Congress, for the Hastings and Dakota Railroad, of 
which he, Le Due, was president; and that he, Le Due, presented 
his demand to the board of directors of the company, and that they 
refused to pay it; and thnt he. Governor Donnelly, then reduced his 
demand to $5,000, and again Le Due presented it to the company, and 
again they refused to pay it. But Le Due said that he did not con- 
sider this attempt at bribery dishonorable, and that he and Mr. Don- 
nelly remained warm friends for years afterwards. Goveinor Donnelly 
produced the secretary of the company and another gentleman, one 
of the board of directors and of the executive committee at that 
time, both perfectly reputable men, and they swore positively that 
no such demands were ever made by Le Due, Donnelly or any 
one else. And Le Due could not and did not produce a single wit- 
ness to sustain his statement, out of all the large board of directors 
and stockholders of the company. 

And it further appeared that the company was practically 
bankrupt at the time; that it had but about $3,000 in its treasury 
when Le Due swore Donnelly asked them for $10,000; that its stock 
was worthless; that he, Le Due, stated, at a meeting of the direct- 
ors (Governor Donnelly not being present, and never having been 
present at any meeting of the board), that Governor D. had ren- 
dered the company great services, outside of his duties as Congress- 
man; that he asked no compensation therefor, but that he, Le Due, 
moved that, as an expresssion of their gratitude (Governor Don- 
nelly having subscribed for $2,500 of the stock and paid in a five per 
cent, assessment on it), his money so paid, $125, be returned to him, 
and that the balanct; of his assessments be treated as paid up in full. 
This was done; and the secretary so notified Governor Donnelly; 
but he never replied to the notice; he regarded the stock as worth- 
less; he had subscribed for stock, as others had done, to help along 
a local enterprise ; the stock was never issued or delivered to him ; the 
road became bankrupt through Le Due's mismanagement, and the 



138 ADDENDA. 

citizens of Hastings, who had invested some $70,000 in the enterprise, 
lost every cent of their money, and the stock became utterly worth- 
less — not worth the paper it was printed on. The largest stockholder 
in the company, Stephen Gardner, president of the First National 
Bank of Hastings; L. S. Follett, cashier of the same, and Michael 
Comer, Treasurer of Dakota County (both of these two last named 
gentlemen having also put their money into the road, as a local pub- 
lic enterprise), united in a letter to the St. Paul Press, dated Feb- 
ruary 23, 1874, in which they said : 

" Le Due asked us to vote Mr. Donnelly $2,500 in stock, saying that it would 
only in part compensate him for his trouble. We knew that Mr. Donnelly had 
perfoi'med these services, and voted him the stock, not for any past Congressional 
services, or with the hope of any in the future, but solely for services in aiding 
Le Due, upon his (Le Due's) own representations as to the value of the services en- 
dered. The resolution was passed at a public meeting of the Board of Directors, 
and almost every 'person in Hastings, at the time, hiew of it, and it was looked upon by 
all as a perfectly legitimate transaction. Mr. Donnelly was not present, knew 
nothing of the inatter until afterwards, and did not take the stock." 

They further say : 

"We knew Governor Donnelly Avhen he first went to Congress, and had pretty 
fair means of knowing his financial condition, and when he returned, after six years 
in Congress, his means were not visibly increased, and he was not one of that' kind 
that squandered money. . . . We believe he is unselfish and above bribery, 
and we know that he did not prostitute his position in Congress to his own pecu- 
niary advantage. " 

The St. Paul Press published this letter. It never attempted to 
deny or contradict its statements, and yet, with dreadful mendacity, 
it continued its slanderous attacks on Grovernor Donnelly, on this 
very charge^ year after year, and set it up in its answer to the libel 
suit; and when Governor Donnelly's counsel attempted to show 
that they had published the foregoing letter, and knew perfectly 
well that the charge was false, they made the technical objection 
that the St. Paul Press and the St. Paul Pioneer-Press ivere not 
one and the same paper, although they admitted that the Press had 
simply bought out the Pioneer; and that the same man edited and 
the same man managed the old Press and the new Pioneer-Press! 

The Memphis and El Paso Chaege. 

This charge was fully as baseless as the last. Gen. John C. 
Fremont, the great explorer, conqueror of California, and first can- 
didate of the Eepublican party for the Presidency, was, in 1869, 
president of a Texas railroad company called " The Memphis and 
El Paso." At the close of Governor Donnelly's term as Congress- 
man, when he was about to return to private life, General Fremont 
offered to employ him, as an attorney for his company, to appear 
before the committees of the next Congress and sustain an applica- 
tion for legislation which would enable them to extend their road 
from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, over the line now occupied by the 
Southern Pacific Railway. The company had no money, and its 



COL. BL ANTON DUNCANS STATEMENT. 139 

stock was practically worthless; and General Fremont ottered 
Governor Donnelly a large amount of such stock, and a due-bill 
of the company for $50,000, if he would come to the next Congress, 
pay his own expenses and work for the road. If Governor Don- 
nelly had accepted that otter there would have been nothing wrong 
about it, for he was out of public life, and he had been educated 
for the law, and was even then a practicing attorney. But, after 
considering the otter, Mr. Donnelly declined it and never received a 
penny from the company. 

In 1875 the St. PaufPre^s — Joe Wheelock — made a charge that 
Mr. DouMelly had been corruptly intiuenced by the Memphis and 
El Paso Company, as a member of Congress, and thereupon Doctor 
William Schmoele, treasurer of the company, wrote a letter to the 
Phi]adeli:)hia Press, dated February 10, 1875^ in which he said: 

" Having held a contract with that company, by which I was to nold and dis- 
pose of all the assets of the company, and apply the' proceeds to the building, etc., 
of the road, and being, at the same "time, one of the officers of the company and 
familiar with its affairs, I am able to state authoritatively that Mr. Donnelly 
never received one cent from the company, or from any person for it." 

Dr. Schmoele then proceeds to state the ofter made to Gov- 
ernor Donnelly to employ him, about a week, he says (it was 
really four days), before the close of his term as Congressman; and 
that Governor Donnelly declined the same ; and adds : 

"J feel that this statement is due to M,r. Donnelly, whom I have always 
known and regarded as one of our most patriotic, pure and thorough statesmen." 

This letter the St. Paul Press printed, and tlien retracted the 
charge that it had made; ihis retraction was in February, 1875, and 
closed with these words : 

" And we, therefore, cheerfully admit that, as the case now stands, the evidence 
affords no sufficient ground for the conclusion that the stock or money agreed to he paid 
him ivere designed as a corrupt consideration for his legislative services.^' 

And yet, despite this retraction, Wheelock, year after year, when- 
ever Governor Donnelly was a candidate for ofiice, or was striking 
heavy blows against the thieves, in the legislature or elswhere, has 
revamped and revived this charge, and even made it a part of his 
justification in the libel suit! There are no words in the English 
language that can do justice to such a malignant character. 

CoL. Blanton Duncan's Statement. 

It seems that one of the directors of the defunct Memphis and 
El Paso company was the celebrated Col. Blanton Duncan, of Ken- 
tucky, one of the ablest Democrats and foremost statesmen of the 
South. He was at Los Angeles, California, at the time of the trial 
of the libel suit, and seeing, by the newspaper reports, that one of 
the charges made against Governor Donnelly, by his enemies, was in 
connection with that company, of which he had been a director, he 



140 ADDENDA. 

voluntarily wrote a letter to Governor Donnelly, in which he gives 
a full history of the company, and says : 

'* If you had informed me that you required anybody to hear testimony that 
you had passed through the times with clean hands and a clear conscience, when 
dishonest men could make fortunes under the syndicates which ruled at Washing- 
ton in 1868-9, I could have said emphatically, as I do now, that you were one of 
the clean-handed. You had opportunities, from your great influence and the warm' 
friendship entertained for you by many prominent men, to have amassed a million 
easily, by simply turning rascal. But'instead of that you have lived as poor as a 
church-mouse for twenty years, expressing your fearless independence on all occa- 
sions, and, as I understand, making a bare living from your literary efforts. If all 
the slanderous charges brought against you have no greater foundation than those in con- 
nection tvith the El Pdso, you are as ivhite as an arigeU^ 

After giving a history of the legislation in connection with the 
company, and its subsequent unfortunate career, he concludes : 

' ' I knew fully who were the corrupt men engaged, and I have no hesitation 
in saying that you were not ' in it;' and that no breath of scandal was whispered 
about you, when scores of public men were freely discussed." 

Bill King's Chaeges. 

It is hardly worth while to dignify Bill King's charges by reply- 
ing to them. The fact that he made them is a sufGicient refutation. 
He has been the life-long enemy of Governor Donnelly ; the life-long 
tool of rings and corporations, with all his dreadful record in the 
past — he has been, in short, the worst and most dangerous instru- 
ment of Plutocracy in the whole world. Governor Donnelly epit- 
6mized the man when he said : 

'' And there sits the mephitic Bill King, with his tail over his 
back, surrounded by the unapproachable atmosphere of his own un- 
paralleled reputation!" 

We have seen that he contradicted himself flatly on the witness 
stand. He first swore that, in the Senatorial fight, in 1869, he and 
his brother Dana were neutral, as between Governor Donnelly and 
Governor Eamsey ; and then, when he saw that Governor Donnelly 
held in his hand documentary evidence which would contradict him on 
that point, he whirled around and swore that both he and his brother 
Dana, who was a member of the Legislature, were earnestly support- 
ing Governor Donnelly, and continued to support him to the end of 
the contest. And yet he had just sworn that Governor Donnelly had 
offered him $3,000, to give to Dana, to corruptly induce him to sup- 
port Donnelly, the man he was already earnestly/ in favor of! 

But his other charge was even more ridiculous. He swore that 
C. P. Huntington, the famous president of the Central Pacific Eail- 
road Company, wrote him, King, a letter, in January or February, 
1869, — the first and only letter, he says, that Huntington had ever 
written him, — inclosing a check, for $2,500, drawn to bearer, and 
requested him to give it to Governor Donnelly, because " for obvious 
reasons" he, Huntington, did not want to send it directly to Don- 
nelly ! And he swore he handed Governor Donnelly that check and 
destroyed that letter. There was, of course, nothing to have pre- 



DEGRADING THE LA W. 141 

vented Mr. Huntington, if the story had been true, from sending 
the check, in a letter, directly to Governor Donnelly himself 
through the mails; and, as no one would have known anything 
about it, in that case, but Donnelly and himself, it would have 
been a thousand times safer than *^to have placed in the hands 
of a man of King's reputation evidence that would —if the charge 
was true — have been sufficient to convict both Huntington and 
Donnelly of bribery, and have sent them to the penitentiary. As 
Mr. Wellington said, on the trial : 

"If King had ever come into possession of any such letter, written by the 
millionaire Californian, he would have cut his right arm off before he would have 
destroyed it. He would have had not only the president of the richest railroad cor- 
poration in the world on his knees forever after, subject to all the exactions he 
might see fit to make upon him ; but he would also have had his enemy, Donnelly 
in his power forever. The whole story is a lie, and an absurd lie." ' 

It is needless to add that Governor Donnelly swore that there was 
not a syllable of truth in King's statement. The Pioneer-Press did 
not call Mr. Huntington as a witness, although as a railroad man 
he could have had no sympathy with Mr. Donnelly ; and since the 
trial Huntington has declared, most emphatically, through the 
public press, that King is a liar; that he never sent any such 
check to King ; and that he never paid Mr. Donnelly, directly or 
indirectly, a single dollar. 

Degrading the Law. 
And this is all there is of the charges that have been heralded over 
the whole world. This is all there is of the filth that has been heaped 
upon Governor Donnelly's head for twenty years past by Joseph 
A. Wheelock. Brought to the analysis of a court and jury, it becomes 
thin air. Governor Donnelly's defense has been complete and 
overwhelming at every point. The Pioneer-Press spent $12,000 
in this trial; a large part of this was paid to detectives to 
search the face of the world for everything Governor Don- 
nelly had done during thirty-five years past, in order to find 
something — anything — that would sustain and save them. 
And, not content with professional detectives, they have de- 
graded the very profession of the law, by hiring the law-firm of 
Flandrau & Squires, of St. Paul, to play sleuth-hounds and spies, 
and range over the country from New York and Washington 
to the western boundary of Minnesota. No other reputable firm in 
America would have descended to such work. 

A Class of Democrats Described. 

And this reminds us of a description in Governor Donnelly's 
journal [1880] of a class of men that have been, for twenty years 
the curse of the Democratic party in Minnesota, and probably in 
other States : 

"There is a class of superserviceable Democrats who are always ready to sell 



142 ADDENDA. 

their poor, wMsky-sodden brains to the defense of Republican iniquity. Like 
prostitutes that come of respectable families, the very decency of their antecedents 
gives an increased rate to the wages of their infamy. They are always hired by 
Republican thieves when they are in trouble, because they belong to the opposition, 
which, as a party, has had no share in the steal. They are a stench in the nostrils 
of honest Democrats — for Democracy means, or ought to mean, the cause of the 
common people against the aristocracy. But these fellows believe that if they get 
drunk on Republican champagne it makes them gentlemen — knights — barons — 
feudal lords; — while their instincts may be as base as those of sneak-thieves, — 
mere blackguards, befuddlers of juries, perverters of justice and allies of criminals. 
But they steal the livery of Democratic decency to serve the Republican devil in. 
Pah ! The spirits of Jefferson and Jackson look down from the clouds and spit upon 
the wretches."' 

As a general statement of an abstract truth no exception will 
be taken to the correctness of this description of a class. 

Attacking Mr. Donnelly's Books. 

One of the attorneys for the Pioneer-Press in the libel suit 
spent the greater part of his time, during his final argument, in 
denouncing Governor Donnelly^ s literary tvorks! He said, for in- 
stance, that Ccesafs Column was stolen bodily from Bellamy's Look- 
ing Backward! There is, in fact, no more resemblance between 
these two books than there is between Thomson's Seasons and the 
tragedy of Lear. Nothing but a powerful alcoholic stimulant could 
excuse such ignorant misrepresentation ; but the malignity was all the 
lawyer's own — it had about it the ingrained flavor of the tomahawk 
and the scalping-knife. 

A significant fact is, that this man is the hireling of the 
railroad corporations. At the very time that he was thus denouncing 
Governor Donnelly and his great works he was the paid attorney of 
the Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company, the company whose 
agents flood Dakota County every time Governor D. is a candidate 
for office. 

The Motive. 

But why, I ask, these attacks? Why Elihu Washburne's un- 
founded and unsupported charges'? Why Wheelock's venomous 
persecutions of a lifetime? Why Bill King's coming out from the 
shameful obscurity to which his evil life had consigned him, and 
daring to enter once more into a court of justice, to attempt to 
swear away any man's character f Why did the very railroad attor- 
neys join in this man-hunt f 

Why is Governor Donnelly so harried, tormented, pursued and 
blackened with lies, spread through the agency of the Associated 
Press all over the United States and all over, the world? Why, at 
sixty years, of age, is he- compelled to go into c.ourt to defend his 
good name — for^the sake of hi-s wife and children — against such a 
gang of knaves and thieves ? Why was the inside raihng of the 
court-room at Minneapohs filled, crammed (Mr. Wellington called 



HE IS INDOHSED. 143 

attention to the fact in his speech) with a mob of tools and agents 
of every form of robbery that oppresses the people f The Millers' 
Ring, the Elevator Ring, the Watered Stock Ring, the Railroad Ring, 
the Indian Ring, the Pine LandRing, all were there, inside that railing, 
to help kill and bury this man. What had he done f They admitted, 
by failing to attack it, that for twenty-three years his life had been 
blameless and spotless. They could not show that he had ever in- 
jured a human being. They could not trace home a "single wrong 
or oppression to his door. No combination owned him. In the midst 
of poverty he had always fought for humanity. 

Ah ! that was his offense. 

He would not cease; he would not come to terms; he would not 
sell out; he would not he corrupt ; and, therefore, they charged 

HIM WITH CORRUPTION. 

Think of it ! A gang of rich rascals, rich by public plunder, 
trying to prove that a poor man, living in a httle hamlet, not even 
a village, supporting himself by tongue and pen, was a corrupt and 
purchasable knave, when, if it had been true, they would have had 
no quarrel with him, for they ivoulcl have bought him, over and over 
again, long ago. 

" Ah ! " th-ey said, " if he would only stick to literature and 
book-making, we would crown him with bays and laurels, and we 
would carry him on our shoulders. Why will a man with such 
genius interfere in politics? " 

Why? Because Ignatius Donnelly is something more than a 
book-maker. He is a philanthroi)ist. He wishes to leave the 
world better than he found it. Only some such reason can explain 
his entrance into the filthy pool of politics. He beheves, as he shows 
in Ccesar's Column, that the world is on the high road to ruin, and 
he would save it, if that be possible. He knows there is no money in 
such a contest for him, and no promotion; nothing but defamation 
and sorrow. It is a thankless task. But, as he has often said, in 
his public speeches, he believes that the only title a man can have 
to happiness in the next world is devotion to the interests of his 
fellow creatures in this. That is the key-note of his career. 

He is Indorsed. 

Any one can see the purpose of these ferocious attacks on Gov- 
ernor Donnelly. Hon. John G. Otis, member of Congress elect from 
Kansas, and a very able gentleman, wrote to Governor Donnelly, 
immediately after the trial ; 

"We' have read with great interest the reports from jour libel case. It is 
simply Plutocracy versus the People. 

" We admire your courage in never giving up to the infernal Money-Power. 

" In that suit Ignatius Donnelly represents the cause of the common people 
single-handed. But rest assured he has the sympathy of every true reformer." 



144 ADDENDA. 

The Farmers' Voice, of Chicago, one of the leading Keform 
papers of the United States, says : 

''From his first entrance into public life down to the present time Ignatius 
Donnelly has been a loj'al tribune of the people. 

" He has not only been scrupulously honest in keeping his hands clean from 
the stain of vulgar money bribes, but he'has shown forth that loftier integrity that 
will not temporize and palter with sincere convictions in order to gain high place. 

" Ignatius Donnelly, gifted as he is with commanding genius, could have been 
continuously in public life during the past twenty years. 

"He had merely to compromise with truth, and Governorships, United States 
Senatorships, and even the Presidency of the Nation, would have invited him." 

" If Mr. Donnelly had consented to a truce with the plutocratic corporations 
it would have been all-sufficient. 

" He need not have worked for them either openly or secretly, for the mon- 
opolists would have rewarded him with the highest honors in the Nation, as a 
wage for keeping silent. 

" They would have joyously compromised with him, on a basis that he should 
not attack their atrocious felonies against the prosperity of the producers and the 
stability of the republic. . . . 

"Ignatius Donnelly is above and beyond the power of plutocratic corruption, 
and the threats of the Triumphant Plutocracy cannot frighten his serene and fear- 
less soul. - 

" He is the unrelenting foe of aristocratic privilege, and the leagued money 
kings of America hate, and would destroy him if they could. 

"Men of the great plain people of America, the plutocrats are striving to crush 
Ignatius Donnelly, and they do this because he is your friend, your defender, your 
dauntless tribune. 

" Every blow these assassins strike at him is a blow struck at you, because if 
he were not your champion, they would not seek to do him harm." 

A thousand similar utterances could be quoted from newspapers 
and individuals, since the trial of that famous suit for libel. 
An Appendix to "Cesar's Column." 

Can any one doubt that the events detailed in this biography, 
and especially in these closing chapters, are a fit and proper appendix 
to CcEsafs Column? Can anyone fail to see that there is noth- 
ing told in that book half so significant of the decadence of free 
institutions as this record of the long and terrible battle of a human 
life against the combined forces of the Money Power? Can any one 
fail to see that the subtle, wide-spreading, cruel, degrading despot- 
ism of Prince Cabano already has possession of this country. East and 
West ? Can any one doubt that if the new political revolution is not 
able to arrest these evils and save the republic, peacefully, at the 
ballot-box, the dreadful figure of the column of corpses will soon 
rise, amid flam© and ashes, and the destruction of a rotten civiliza- 
tion? 



EXCEEPTS FEOM THE WIT, WISDOM, POETRY AND 
ELOQUENCE OF IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 



DONNELLIANA. 

EXTRACTS FROM THE WIT, WISDOM, POETRY AND 
ELOQUENCE OF IGNATIUS DONNELLY. 

T NTELLECT. An ounce of brains outweighs a pound of muscle. — 
■^ Speech to Farmers, 1873. 

The Soul. Every fiber of the frame of man or woman partakes 
of the characteristics of the soul. — C(esafs Column. 

Truth. Truth is born an acorn, not an osik.—Bagnarok. 

The Jews. '' Well, " he replied, " it was the old question of the 
survival of the fittest. Christianity fell upon the Jews, originally a 
race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many cent- 
uries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history 
of manlvind bears any record of. Only the strong of body, the cun- 
ning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity 
to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. Like 
breeds like; and now the Christian w^orld is paying, in tears and 
blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant an- 
cestors upon a noble race. When the time came for liberty and 
fair play, the Jew was master in the contest with the Gentile, who 
hated and feared him.'' — CcBsar^s Column. 

How TO Improve the World. Out of arrested selfishness 
comes happiness. — Speech to the State Alliance, December, 1890. 

Evening. 
The day drops piecemeal, darkly crumbling down. 
Heaping the east with gray, worn, twilight ruins. — 1850. 
The World. The world is a garden of beauty, filled with the 
stench of injustice. —Journal, 1886. 



4 BONNELLIANA. 

Loss OF Force. Every concession to our own weaknesses is a 
robbery of our own forces. — 1855. 

LiBE. A fight with bacteria. — Journal, 1889. 
Death. Death is simply the opening of the windows. — Jour- 
nal, 1886. 

The Farmers. '^ There are 6,000,000 farmers in the United States 
hard at work." — Exchange. 

Yes; and half a million thieves living off them. — The Anti-Monop- 
olist. 

Magnanimous. When G-od lays his hand upon a man it is time 
to take ours off. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Love. What a powerful impulse is this love ! It is nature-wide. 
The rushing together of the chemical elements; the attraction of suns 
and planets— all are love. See how even the plant casts its pollen 
abroad on the winds, that it may somewhere reach and rest upon 
the bosom of a sister-flower; and there, amid perfume and sweetness 
and the breath of zephyrs, the great mystery of life is re-enacted. The 
plant is without intellect, but it is sensible to love. — Ccesafs Column. 

The Virtues of Selfishness. It will be no consolation to the 
tra\eler, when he feels the teeth of the lioness crunching his ribs, to 
know that she is a devoted mother and an affectionate spouse. — 
Journal, 1882. 

Twilight. The sunset towers from gold heaps into gloom. — 
1850. 

When Truth's wings are grown she draws her feet out of the 
pigeon -nets of technicality. — Journal, 1868. 

The Tributes of Virtue. Abuse and denunciation are the 
tributes which villainy pays to virtue. — Speech to the State Alliance, 
Bee, 1890. 

GrREAT Poets. And as the hunter knows the older and bolder 
eagles, as they fly far above him in the heavens, by the ragged 
clefts in their wings, where the feathers liave fallen out, so in the 
daring and venturesome soarers above Parnassus, there is a rough- 
ness and carelessness which reveals them, no matter at what alti- 
tude they may fly. — Essay, 1851, 



EXTBACTS AND SELECT FONS. 5 

The Mind. The aiiud, enlightened, is a tremendous engine. 
Given industry enough, and the capacities of the human intellect 
are as unlimited as the universe. It is not the mind falls short. It is 
knowledge. God give us knowledge. — Journal, 1886. 

Political Oratory. — ^The average political speaker knows no 
other literature than the inflamed, disjointed, metaphorical, ex- 
travagant and abusive stuff of party organs and campaign papers. — 
Essay, 1853. 

The Penalties of Independence. The man who in this 
world undertakes to think his own thoughts, and express them, will 
find the angles of ten thousand elbows grinding his ribs continually. 
The fool who has no opinions, and the coward who conceals what 
he has, are always en rapport with the streaming, shouting, happy- 
go-lucky multitude; but woe unto the strong man who does his 
own thinking, and will not be bullied into silence! — The Great 
Cryptogram. 

The Purpose of Things. The purpose of the thing must 
always be greater than the thing itself; it incloses, permeates and 
maintains it. The result is but a small part of the pre-existent in- 
tention. All things must stand or fall by their purposes, and every 
great work is the outgrowth of a great purpose. — The Great Crypto- 
gram. 

Opportunity. Then came the news that a Manchurian pro- 
fessor, an iconoclast, had written a learned work in English, to 
prove that George Washington's genius and moral greatness had 
been much overrated by the partiality of his countrymen. He was 
answered by a learned doctor of Japan, who argued that the great- 
ness of all great men consisted simply in opportunity, and that, for 
every illustrious name that shone in the pages of history, associated 
with important events, a hundred abler men had lived and died un- 
known. The battle was raging hotly, and all China and Japan were 
dividing Into contending factions upon this great issue. — Ccesar's 
Column. 

God's Power Exercised Through Agents. Through what 
infinite seas or atmospheres of life — myriad-formed and multiple- 
natured life — do the spirit and purposes of God reach down to this 
lower world! — Journal, 1889, 



6 DONNELLIANA. 

Genius and Talent. The jeweled arrow of genius will often 
miss the mark which the sturdy shaft of talent pierces to the cen- 
ter.— i854. 

Great Eaces. Great races are the weeded- out survivors of 
great sufiferings. — Bagnarok. 

The Power or Time. You can carry a score of acorns in your 
vest pocket. But one acorn _pZ^t5 time will crush a hundred men. — 
Journal, 1884. 

The Povter of Man. . What an infiDite thing is man, as revealed 
in the tremendous civilization he has built up ! These swarming, 
laborious, all- capable ants seem great enough to attack heaven 
itself, if they could but find a resting-place for their ladders. Who 
can fix a limit to the intelligence or the achievements of our species ? 
— CcBsar^s Column. 

Reasonable. If a man has betrayed you once, do not trust him 
again — at least not in this world. — Address to State Farmers^ Alli- 
ance, 1886. 

What the Woekingmen Need. A friend writes to ask us if 
we indorse the extreme doctrines of the Socialists, as to the division 
of property, etc. Not at all. What the workingmen of the world 
need is a fair chance to acquire property, not an opportunity to de- 
stroy it. — TJie Anti- Monopolist. 

The Unbelief of Ignoeance. The fact that the story of 
Atlantis was for thousands of years regarded as a fable proves noth- 
ing. There is an unbelief which grows out of ignorance, as well as 
a scepticism which is born of intelligence. The people nearest to 
the past are not always those who are best informed concerning the 
past. — Atlantis. 

The Duty of the Ra ces. To the white race I would preach 
mercy and charity. I ask them to give the humblest and lowest a 
chance in the great, fierce battle of life. Do not trample on the 
man that is down. To the black race I would preach patience and 
wisdom. The negro's remedy is not in violence. Six millions cannot 
go to war with sixty millions. He who steps outside of the law 
Invokes all the overwhelming powers of government upon his own 
head, and they crush him. The prejudices of race are not to be 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 7 

dissipated hj groupin.i;- the i)C()plo into tli(^ sepanitions of race-poli- 
tics. —i^oc/or Huguct. 

Washburne Acknowledging Grant's Honors. Why, sir, we 
had General Grant up in Minnesota, and of course the distinguished 
gentleman from lUinois was with him, and when General Grant was 
serenaded the gentleman from Ilhnois stuck his head out of the 
window and thanked the crowd, and when they rode in an open 
barouche together, and the crowd hurrahed, the gentleman from 
Illinois laid his hand upon his heart and bowed profound acknowl- 
edgments. Why, Mr. Speaker, my people up there were in great 
doubt which was Grant and which was Washburne. They naturally 
concluded that the quiet little gentleman must be the fourth-class 
politician, and that the pretentious, fussy individual must be the 
conqueror of Lee. Good old Jesse Grant, it is said, remarked on 
that occasion, " It 'pears to me that Washburne thinks he owns 
'Lysses ; but he don't own me, not by a long sight. ^^— Speech in 
Congress, 1868. 

Great Thoughts. Every great thought is part of the living 
God. It can no more die than God can die. The world may perish, 
but it will be repeated by spirits beyond the st^ivs.— Journal, 1886. 

A Plat on Words. 

What matters it, what does my lady lose. 

If I, a muse, amuse, am used, or muse ? 

Sing, sigh, soar, sorrow, smile, or smirk, or smatter, 

So that I please at all, it is no matter. — 1854. 
A ISeutral Paper. What will that be ? It will represent those 
obscure forms of primal life where both sexes were embraced in the 
same system, and the process of procreation was slow and difficult. 
It will be like the stuff that fell the other day in Kentucky, neither 
fish, flesh, nor good red-herring, but a kind of ill-smelling, unor- 
ganized protoplasm — Democratic at one end, and Republican at the 
other end, united by Government contracts. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

THE FAILURE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION. 

" It is the greatest of pities that so noble and beautiful a civiliza- 
tion should have become so hollow and rotten at the core." 
" Rotten at the core ! " I exclaimed. 



8 DONNELLIANA. 

" Yes ; our civilization has grown to be a gorgeous shell, a mere 
mockery, a sham, outwardly fair and lovely, but inwardly Ml of 
dead men's bones and all uncleanness. To think that mankind is 
so capable of good, and now so cultured and polished, and yet all 
above is cruelty, craft and destruction, and all below is suffering, 
wretchedness, sin and shame ! " 

'^ What do you mean ?" I asked. 

" That civilization is a gross and dreadful failure for seven- tenths 
of the human family ; that seven-tenths of the backs of the world 
are insufficiently clothed; seven -tenths of the stomachs of the world 
are insufficiently fed ; seven-tenths of the minds of the world are 
darkened and despairing, and filled with bitterness against the 
Author of the universe. It is pitiful to think what society is, and 
then to think what it might have been if our ancestors had not cast 
away their magnificent opportunities — had not thrown them into 
the pens of the swine of greed and gluttony.''— (7<^5ar's Column. 

THE BATTLE OF LIFE. 

Life is a perpetual struggle even under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances ; an unending fight of man against man, 

'Tor some slight plank whose weight will bear but one ! " 
And occasionally how monstrous and horrible are the giant selfish- 
nesses which start up under our feet like ghouls and affrights ! 

History is the record of the gradual amelioration of deep-rooted, 
ancient injustice. What a hard, long, bloody, terrible fight it has 
been ! But for the fact that our national organization rests upon a 
basis of new colonizations we would not possess the large measure of 
liberty we now enjoy ; we would be as are the old lands of the world, 
still weighed down by the burdens of feudality and barbarism. But 
being peopled by the overflowings of the poor laboring people of 
Europe, who left the errors and prejudices of the Old World in mid- 
ocean, we have started upon our career of national greatness on the 
grand basis of the perfect political equality of all men. — Speech in 
Congress J January 17, 1867. 

The Blue Flowees a:n"d the Red. I said to them that I did 
not expect black men to become white men, or white men to turn 
into black men ; but there was room on God's footstool for them all. 
The blue flowers in the meadow did not quarrel with the red flowers. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 9 

The oak tree grew jx'accrnlly jjcsidc tlio inai)l(.'. 'J'lic onm^c did 
not ask God wh}' He made the laurel. — Doctor HiKjiict. 

Daniel and the Lions. No wonder the editor of the Minne- 
apolis Tribune wrote to his paper that the " resolutions were moder- 
ately applauded!" "I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that 
word:" ^^ moderately applauded." They cheered sotto-voce, v^ith. 
their ears cocked to catch the responsive echoes from Faneuil Hall. 
They did well not to let themselves out. As " Gath " says, they 
were distressed with the problem " how to keep Daniel alive and 
satisfy the lions at the same time." They were willing to com- 
promise hy giving the lions the meat, and letting Daniel keep the 
bones — his own bones! [Laughter.] It is impossible, my friends, 
to sweeten such a mass of putridity with a pinch of salt in the shape 
of a respectable candidate. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

Material Civilization. Material civilization might be de- 
fined to be the result of a series of inventions and discoveries, 
whereby man improves his condition, and controls the forces of 
nature for his own advantage. — Atlantis. 

A Penetrating Mind. His mind was like a great forceps, 
that reached out and seized the central fact or core of a thing, and 
twisted and pulled until he dragged it out, shrieking, into the hght 
of day ; never to retreat into the shadow again. — Journal, 1890. 

The Legal Profession. The mental labor bestowed by the 
lawyers on their business is out of all proportion to the objects at 
stake. Ask the names of the great lawyers of the last century, and 
there is no answer. Ask the names of the great lawyers of another 
nation, and fame is silent. Their toil is in the little affairs of others; 
their reputation is among their brethren. And yet some have given 
more anxious toil and severe thought to this trifling business than 
have been employed to conquer kingdoms and build up dynasties. 
— Laiv Essays, 1852. 

Dakota County after an Election. Dakota County this 
year is a perfect Golgotha— "a place of skulls." Nearly every 
man has his head in his hand, examining the cracks and sore 
places, and wondering whether the other fellow's skull is as badly 
damaged as his own. — The Anti- Monopolist. 



10 BONNELLIANA. 

Washbtjene's Eritditiox. Mr. Speaker, I tremble for my 
country. Is it true that eighty odd years of republican government 
have reduced us so low that there is hut one honest man in this 
House — but one Lot in all this Sodom ? Does no voice but his ring 
out against chques and conspiracies and rings ? Will no voice but 
his be heard in all the future assuring this House that they are 
all a pack of knaves, that the country is going to the devil — con- 
cluding with that favorite quotation, launched at us from the vast 
stores of his erudition : 

" Shake not thy gory locks at me, 
Ttiou canst not say I did it," 

given with a roar like a wounded gorilla, and ending with a rush on 
the cloak-room, amid the shouts and laughter of the House? — Speech 
in Congress, 1868. 

BEEAK EANKS. 

The perpetual dread of the South is a race war. When the 
negroes all mass themselves together, in solid pohtical phalanx, it 
looks, to the whites, like a black army ready to march to battle. 
Every passion in the white man's breast rises at the challenge, ready 
for the conflict; — race, home, wife, children, prosperity, self-govern- 
ment, liberty, shriek in his ears their clamorous appeals for protec- 
tion. He seizes his rifle, — he marches, — he murders. 
What is the remedy? 

Let the black men break ranks! Let them dissolve into the com- 
munity. Let them divide politically on other lines than those of 
color. Great economic questions are arising which have nothing to 
do with the old struggle. A tidal wave — a great passionate cry for 
justice, for prosperity, for liberation from the plunderers, for each 
man's share of happiness and the fruits of civihzation — sweeps, 
high-mounting, through the hearts and brains of the whites of the 
South. They are gathering in a vast army, with principles for ban- 
ners and ballots for weapons. The black man's interests are the 
same as theirs. He needs prosperity, growth, opportunity, happi- 
ness. He wants to see the robbers struck down. He desires all 
that civihzation can give him — all that belongs to him. Will he 
join with his white brethren to rescue the land from poverty and 
ruin ? Or will he stand afar off, in solid, unreasoning, sullen, threat- 
ening array; to perpetuate the race-prejudices which are destroying 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 11 

him ? When he breaks his own ranks and moves, in sohd column, 
with part, at least, of his white friends and neighbors, they will 
perceive that his ballots are l>ullets, as potent as their own to kill 
injustice. Their own interests will compel them to defend his rights. 
The day of persecution and cruelty will end. In every intelhgent 
white man the intelligent black man will find a defender; and the 
reign of peace and love and brotherhood will begin in the South, 
yea, in the whole land. And if the negro does not then rise to the 
topmost heights of culture and education and material prosperity, it 
will be his own fault.— Doctor Huguet. 

The Fables of the Woeld's Youth. There is nothing in 
antiquity that has not a meaning. The very lables of the world's 
childhood should be sacred from our laugliter.— Ea/zworoA:. 

Human Tigers a:nd Wolves. I pitied mankind, caught in 
the grip of such wide-spreading tendencies. I said to myself: 
'' Where is it all to end i What are we to expect of a race without 
heart or honor ? What may we look for when the powers of the 
highest civilization supplement the instincts of tigers and wolves? 
Can the brain of man flourish when the heart is dead? '^—Ccesar's 
Column. 

Abraham Lincoln. I am aware, Mr. Speaker, of the great 
claims which President Lincoln has upon the people of the United 
States. I recognize that popularity which accompanies him, and 
which, considering the ordeal through which he has passed, is little 
less than miraculous. I recognize that unquestioning faith in his 
honesty and ability which pervades all classes, and that sincere 
affection with which almost the entire population regard him. We 
must not underrate him even in our praises. He is a great man. 
Great not after the old models of the world, but with a homely and 
original greatness. He will stand out to future ages in the history 
of these crowded and confused times with wonderful distinctness. 
He has carried a vast and discordant population safely and peace- 
fully through the greatest of political revolutions with such consum- 
mate sagacity and skill that while he led he appeared to follow; 
while he innovated beyond all precedent he has been denounced as 
tardy ; while he struck the shackles from the hmbs of three million 
slaves he has been hailed as a conservative ! If to adapt, persist- 



12 BONNELLIANA. 

enll}' aucl continuously, just and righteous principles to all the 
perplexed windings and changes of human events, and to secure in 
the end the complete triumph of those principles, be statesmanship, 
then Abraham Lincoln is the first of statesmen. — Speech in Congress, 
May 2, 1864. 

Money-making. The money-getting faculty is low down in the 
accoutrement of the mind. Midas was always painted with the ears 
of an ass. — Journal, 1889. 

Genius. Genius is a powerful predisposition, so strong that it 
overrules a man's whole life, from boyhood to the grave. The 
greatness of a mind is in proportion to its receptivity, its capacity 
to assimilate a vast mass of food; it is an intellectual stomach that 
eliminates, not muscle, but thought. Its power holds a due relation 
to its greed — it is an eternal and insatiable hunger. In itself it is 
but an instrument. It can work only upon external material. — 
The Great Cryptogram. 

Sitting on the Safety-Valye. But I must cease. Several 
speakers are to follow me. In the old days of steamboat racing on 
the Southern Mississippi it was customary to set a negro on the 
safety-valve. If the boiler got more pressure on it t!ian it could 
stand there was an explosion and that colored gentleman was pro- 
jected into space and became a white-robed angel. When I look 
back at these gentlemen behind me, full to bursting with bottled-up 
eloquence, I feel like the negro on the safety-valve — something has 
got to give, and if I don't get out of the way I run a risk of being 
thrown half way across this YidW..— Speech, St. Paul, 1887. 

THE LABORERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 

What struck me most was their incalculable multitude and their 
silence. It seemed to me that I was witnessing the resurrection of 
the dead ; and that these vast, streaming, endless swarms were the 
condemned marching noiselessly as shades to unavoidable and ever- 
lasting misery. They seemed to me merely automata in the hands 
of some ruthless and unrelenting destiny. They hved and moved, 
but they were without heart or hope. The illusions of the imagina- 
tion, which beckon all of us forward, even over the roughest paths 
and through the darkest valleys and shadows of life, had departed 
from the scope of their vision. They knew that to-morrow could 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 13 

briug them nothing better than to-day — the same shameful, 
pitiable, contemptible, sordid struggle for a mere existence. If they 
produced children it was reluctantly or unmeaningly; for they 
knew the wretches must tread in their footsteps, and enter, like 
them, that narrow, gloomy, high-walled pathway, out of which 
they could never climb; which began almost in infancy and ended 
in a pauper's grave — nay, I am wrong, not even in a pauper's 
grave; for they >might have claimed, perhaps, some sort of owner- 
ship over the earth which enfolded them, which touched them and 
mingled with their dust. But public safety and the demands of 
science had long ago decreed that they should be whisked off, as 
soon as dead, a score or two at a time, and swept on iron tram-cars 
into furnaces heated to such intense white heat that they dissolved 
crackling, even as they entered the chamber, and rose -in nameless 
gases through the high chimney. That towering structure was the 
sole memorial monument of millions of them. Their graveyard was 
the air. Nature reclaimed her own with such velocity that she 
seemed to grudge them the very dust she had lent them during their 
wretched pilgrimage. The busy, toiling, rushing, roaring, groaning 
universe, big, with young, appeared to cry out : " Away with them! 
Away with them! They have had their hour! They have per- 
formed their task. Here are a billion spirits waiting for the sub- 
stance we loaned them. The spirits are boundless in number; 
matter is scarce. Away with them! " — Gcesafs Column. 

Too True. Poverty in all ages has been the most efficient tool 
of despotism.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist. 

The Old World. That boundless sea of human misery, which 
roars and dashes and moans and threatens around the base of civil- 
ization, flinging its salt tears even into the faces of those who sit 
highest in assured prosperity. — Journal, 1888. 

An Advice to the Races. The race, whatever its color, 
which gives itself over unanimously and unconditionally to any one 
political party, incurs the hatred of the organization it opposes and 
the contempt of the organization it serves. The one has nothing to 
hope from it ; the other has nothing to fear from it. The one party 
feels that it can never gain it; the other that it can never lose it. 
The former persecutes the race for their unreasoning hostihty; the 



14 DONNELLIANA. 

other despises thOTi for their unreasoning fideUty. The first feels 
that it cannot placate them by doing them justice; the other that 
they will not revolt under any amount of injustice. They become a 
target for the abuse of all men; a wall behind which scoundrels 
hide to steal ; a faction without a friend or an advocate. — Doctor 



Insufficiency. There can be no doubt that if one were to 
look abroad, with a wide range of thought, he would cast down his 
weapons and turn his back on the world's conflict. Insufficiency is 
written over all the temples of human labor. Riches to the sordid; 
praise to the vain; pleasure to the thoughtless; but for the search- 
ing and penetrating soul of man there is no rest, no XQivigQ.— Essay, 
1854. 

Did You? Did you ever know a banker to be reduced to snow- 
packs and a ragged overcoat ?—T/ie Anti-Monopolist. 

A Vision of Destruction. And then I thought how thin a 
crust of earth separated all this splendor from that burning heU of 
misery beneath it. And if the molten mass of horror should break 
its limitations and overflow the earth ! Aheady it seemed to me the 
planet trembled; I could hear the volcanic explosions; I could see 
the sordid flood of wrath and hunger pouring through these halls; 
cataracts of misery bursting through every door and window, and 
sweepiug away all this splendor into never-ending blackness and 
ruin. — Ccesafs Column. 

A Question. Who ride in buggies — the men who raise the 
crops or the men who handle them? — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Intemperance. A habit deadlier than death, for it makes eren 
death disgrsiceful.— Journal, 1888. 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DOCTOR HUGUET. 

How long I slept I know not. It must have been an hour or 

two an hour or two of disturbed and uneasy slumber, troubled 

with dreams, in which I saw again and again those reproachful, 
threatening eyes. Then came a feeling as if I was smothering — 
choking. I gasped and was awake. But the smothering sensation 
did not leave me. It seemed to me as if the air was exhausted ; as 
if I was shut up in a vault or — coffin ! And then I noticed a strong. 



EXTBAGTS AND SELECTIONS. 15 

negro-like smell. My first thought was that a negro burglar had 
entered my room and was leaning over me. I threw my hands up ; 
they encountered nothing. I was in total darkness. As my arms 
fell one of them came near my face, and the negro-like smell grew 
stronger than before. Instinctively I placed my bare arm close to 
my nosC; and I then perceived that the strong odor came from my 
own person. What could it mean ? I felt with one hand my other 
hand and arm. The arm was larger than my own — much larger. 
The hand was coarse and huge — the palms calloused and rough — 
little, fine filaments of skin projected fi'om the frayed callosities, as 
in the hands of those worn with hard work. My God ! What does 
it mean ? I quickly brought both hands to my face. The negroloid 
smell was stronger than ever. I felt my face. Instead of my own 
clean-cut features, my hands encountered a flat nose and a pair of 
swollen lips. Was I dreaming some dreadful dream? I bit my 
hand until the blood came. No ; I was wide awake. The bed was 
not my own. It was lumpy and stufied, apparently, with straw. I 
felt out on both sides of me. My left hand encountered a huge, 
sleeping body. 

Where am I? What in God's name does all this mean ? Am I 
insane ? Has some dreadful disease — like the Indian elephantiasis — 
overtaken me in my sleep, and swelled my limbs and features to 
twice their natural size? But that would not account for the 
changed bed and the sleeper by my side. I must find out where I 
am. I put my feet out of the bed, and stood erect. In doing so 
my head struck the ceiling with such force that I made an exclama- 
tion of pain. There was a movement in the bed, and a voice cried 
out; shrilly and fiercely; and in the unmistakable speech of a negro 
woman : 

"Hi; there! Sam Johnsing, you d d nigger! What you 

gittin' up for now ? Does you think yer gwine steal Colonel Jen- 
kins' shirts again, and pawn 'em ? " 

There was a bounce out of bed on the instant, and the next 
minute a match was struck and a tallow candle lighted. It re- 
vealed to me an astonishing sight. I was standing in a negro cabin, 
between the bed and the wall, my head touching the sloping roof. 
On the other side of the bed, holding the lighted caudle in her 
hand, and glaring at me savagely, was a huge, coal-black negro 



16 DONNELLIANA, 

woman. In one corner was a cradle, in another a wash-tub, and 
across the further end of the cabin were some hues, on which hung 
an assortment of washing — stockings, shirts and underwear. All 
this my astonished eyes took in at a glance. I looked down at 
myself. A torn fragment of a shirt revealed to me the large body, 
arms and legs of a negro — the huge, splay feet resting on the mud 
floor of the cabin. 

Tor a few moments I was as one paralyzed. My mind seemed 
torn from its moorings. I could not put the facts together. I had 
fa-'en asleep in my own luxurious room. I had awakened here in 
•this wretched hovel. Who was this woman ? I had never seen her 
before. Who was this man, standing, almost naked, against the 
wall, with eyes revolving wildly, taking in his surroundings? It 
could not be I — Doctor Anthony Huguet — the gentleman — the 
physician — the cultured scholar ! Oh, no ! That thought was too 
dreadful — too impossible. I smiled. 

The woman noted the expression, and said : 

" What you grinnin' at, you d d nigger — you chicken-thief. 

You knows berry well dat you got up to steal de clothes, to buy 
more whisky. But I'll crack yer d d skull first. " 

With this she picked up an ironing-board and assumed a 
threatening position, advancing toward me. 

And still my brain worked, and still I couldn't understand what 
it all meant. How did I come here ? Where was I ? What had 
happened to me ? Who was this standing against the wall, with 
stooped head, watching the advancing virago ? It was not I, and 
yet I seemed to think witliin it ! How did I come to be within this 
black figure ? And then came to me a dreadful thought : 

" My God! has my soul been placed within the body of this black 
man f, ^^— Doctor Huguet. 

Maelowe and Shakespeare. And we have seen the critics 
speculating whether Marlowe, if he had not been prematurely cut 
off, in his twenty-ninth year, would not have been in time as great a 
poet as Shakespeare! As if bountiful Nature, after waiting for five 
thousand years to produce a Shakespeare, had been delivered of 
twins in that year of grace 1564 ! And we are asked to believe that, 
if it had not been for Marlowe's drunken brawl, the two intellectual 
monsters would have existed side by side for thirty years or so, cor- 



EXTEACTS AND SELECTIONS. 17 

riiscatinfr Tamburlanes, Lears, Doctor Faustiises and Hamlets to 
the end of the chapter; to the infinite delight of the pyrotechni- 
cally astounded multitude, who couldn't have told the productions 
of one from the other. But it was a sad fact that one of these 
brilliant suns was not able to rise until the other had set; and 
unfortunate that both at last declined their glorious orbs into a sea 
of strong drink, while " the god of the machine " was behind the 
scenes delivering immortal sermons in behalf of temperance. — The 
Great Cryptogram. 

The Civilizatio:n- of the Wood-tick. The civilization of the 
world to-day is the civilization of the wood-tick and not the honey- 
bee. The wood-tick sucks, but it creates nothing. The thing that 
carries it feeds it. It is the bloated plutocrat of the woods — simply 
claws and belly. A higher civilization means death to the wood- 
ticks and fair play for the honeybees. — Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 
1890. 

THE DEVOTION OF THE WEST TO THE UNION. 

We who come, Mr. Speaker, from the far West, have not that 
deep and ingrained veneration for State power which is to be found 
among the inhabitants of some of the older States. We have found 
that State lines, State names. State organizations, are, in most 
cases, the veriest creatures of accident. To us there is no savor of 
antiquity about them. Our people move into a region of country 
and make the State. We feel ourselves to be offshoots of the nation. 
We look to the nation for protection. The love of our hearts 
gathers around the nation; and there is no prouder and no gladder 
sight to our eyes than the flag of the nation fluttering in the sun- 
shine over our frontier homes. We are willing to trust the nation. 
We have never received aught at its hands but benefits. We need 
erect no bulwark of State sovereignty behind which to shelter our- 
selves from the gifts which it so generously and bountifully showers 
upon us ; and when the order of nature is reversed and it calls to us 
in its extremity for help and protection, the farmer will be found 
leaving his plow in the furrow, and the woodman the tree, half 
felled in the forest, to fly to its assistance. Part of a mightynation, 
we feel that our fame and greatness reach to the uttermost ends of 
the earth, over all the seas, and through all the continent. ■ Citizens 



18 DONNELLIANA. 

of States, we are lost and buried from the gaze of mankind, the 
tribatary Nubias of those governments which control the mouth of 
our Nile; without commerce, without a navy, without a flag; the 
merest insignificant accidents. Be assured, sir, those interior States 
will forever insist upon ^' the Union," and will continue to insist 
upon it, even if abandoned by all the rest of the nation. It is their 
right to reach the sea in every direction over kindred territory; nay, 
it is more than their right; it is their necessity. 

There is, then, one solidified sentiment in the hearts of our 
people, one sentiment which will not be denied, one sentiment which 
rises above all political considerations — this nation must live. 
What shall stand in the way of its life"^ The institution of 
slavery? Put the nation and slavery in the balance, and ask 
the people of the Northwest to choose between them. What 
is slavery to them? Unfitted for their climate, repugnant to 
their tastes, destructive to their interests, bloody with the 
blood of their children, onerous with the weight of taxation to 
themselves, and terrible with portents of ruin to the nation in the 
future, what interest have they in the preservation of slavery? 
Will they for slavery give up that kind and generous Government 
which has so long blessed and protected them? Will they for 
slavery see their fair, bright flag, with all its clustering stars and 
all its lines of light, torn into shreds and trampled in the dust? 
Will they for slavery drag down upon themselves the fabric of their 
Grovernment and bury themselves beneath mountains of anarchy 
and destruction? Never! It needs but to present the question to 
call forth a unanimous answer. Let that man step forth who is 
willing to bring calamity and ruin upon himself and family that a 
gigantic crime may continue to exist, undisturbed, a thousand miles 
away; who is willing to sacrifice the enjoyments of earth that hell 
may escape annoyance.— ;Speec/^ in Congress, May 2, 1864. 

The Ceuel Past. Let the dead past bury its dead. It was a 
cruel, bloody and merciless past. Its ways were not our ways, nor 
its thoughts our thoughts. Let us thank God that we live in this 
great, broad, generous, tolerant age ; and let us frown down all 
attempts to revive the evil passions and hatreds of the past. — The 
Anti- Monopolist. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 19 

SHAKSPERE'S DAUGHTER. 

Think of it ! The daughter of William Shakspere, the daughter 
of the greatest intellect of the age (if he wrote the Plays), or of all 
ages, the profound scholar, the master of Latin, Greek, Italian, 
French, Spanish, Danish, the philosopher, the scientist, the politi- 
cian, the statesman, the physician, the musician, signs her name with 
a curley-queue like a Pottawatomie Indian. And this girl was 
twenty-seven years old, and no idiot; she was subsequently married 
to one of the leading citizens of the town, Thomas Quincy, vintner. 
She was raised in the same town wherein was the same free-school 
in which, we are assured, Shakspere received that magnificent edu- 
cation which is manifested in the Plays. 

Imagine William E. Gladstone, or Herbert Spencer, dwelling in 
the same house with a daughter, in the full possession of all her 
faculties, who signed her name with a pot-hook. Imagine the father 
and*daughter meeting every day and looking at each other! And 
yet neither of these really great men is to be mentioned in the same 
breath with the immortal genius who produced the plays. 

With an income, as we have shown, equal to $25,000 yearly of 
our money; with the country swarming with graduates of Oxford 
and Cambridge, begging for bread and ready to act as tutors; living 
in a quiet, rural neighborhood, where there were few things to dis- 
tract attention, William Shakspere permitted his daughter to attain 
the ripe age of twenty- seven years, unable to read the immortal 
quartos which had made her father famous and wealthy. We will 
not— we cannot— believe it.— The Great Cryptogram. 

Daybreak. 

The sweep 
Of the torn sunlight down some craggy slope. 
Half morning and half midnight. — 1850. 
American Politics. Dean Swift described a country where the 
horses ruled the men ; we have here in America a country where 
the asses rule the men. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Night. 

Many-folded night. 
Like a black banner drooped along the sky. 
Blazoning a quaint deviee of stars. — 1850. 



20 DONNELLIANA. 

EiGHT-LiYiNG. Death is not a thing to be dreaded, if man 
lives aright. 

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight: 
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree, 
But all mankind's concern is Charity." 

— Doctor Huguet. 

A Compaeiso:n'. ^' A negro highwayman near Lexington bought 
a revolver of a man for $3, and then used the weapon to rob him of 
all his money, including the purchase price." 

That's a good deal like getting a land-grant from the people to 
build a railroad, and then charging them oppressive tariffs on the 
transportation of their goods forever after. — The Anti- Monopolist, 

AN APPEAL TO MAN'S BETTER NATURE. 

Build a little broader. Dives. Establish spiritual relations. 
Matter is not everything. You do not deal in certainties. Yo\i are 
but a vitalized speck, filled with a fraction of God's delegated intelli- 
gence, crawling over an egg-shell filled with fire, whirling madly 
through infinite space, a target for the bombs of a universe. 

Take your mind off your bricks and mortar, and put out your 
tentacles toward the great spiritual world around you. Open com- 
munications with God. You can not help God. For Him who 
made the Milky Way you can do nothing. But here are His creatures. 
Not a nerve, muscle or brain- convolution of the humblest of these 
but duphcates your own ; you excel them simply in the co-ordination 
of certain inherited faculties which have given you success. Widen 
your heart. Put your intellect to work to so readjust the values of 
labor and increase the productive capacity of nature, that plenty 
and happiness, light and hope, shall dwell in every heart, and the 
catacombs be closed for ever. 

And from such a world God will fend off the comets with His 
great right arm, and the angels will exult over it in heaven. — 
BagnaroJc. 

THE POWER OF POVERTY. 

'' The strongest resolves of men melt in the fire of want like 
figures of wax. It is simply a question of increasing pressure to 
find the point where virtue inevitably breaks. Morality, in man or 



j^xthacts and selections. 21 

woman, is a Diagiiificcnt liowcr wbicli blossoms only in the rich soil 
of prosperity; impoverish the land, and the bloom withers. If 
there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the 
pressure has not been great enough ; sufficient nourishment has not 
yet been withdrawn from the soil. Dignity, decency, honor, fade 
away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrad- 
ing, cruel wretchedness. Before the clamors of the stomach the 
soul is silent. " 

" I cannot believe that," I replied; " look at the martyrs who 
have perished in the flames for an opinion. " 

" Yes, " he said, " it is easy to die in an ecstasy of enthusiasm 
for a creed; with all the world looking on; to exchange life for eter- 
nal glory ; but put the virgin, who would face without shrinking 
the flames or the wild beasts of the arena, into some wretched gar- 
ret, in some miserable alley, surrounded by the low, the ignorant, 
the vile ; close every avenue and prospect of hope ; shut off every 
ennobling thought or sight or deed ; and then subject the emaci- 
ated frame to endless toil and hopeless hunger, and the very fibers 
of the soul will rot under the debasing ordeal, and there is nothing 
left but the bare animal, that must be fed at whatever sacrifice. " — 
Gcesar^s Column. 

The Chix. The chin, the organ of character. The pedestal on 
which the brain rests. — Journal, 1891. 

Bigotry. Bacon's mind was too great to be illiberal. Bigotry 
is a burst of strong light, through the crevice of a narrow mind, 
lighting only one face of its object and throwing all the rest into 
hideous and grotesque shadows. Bacon's mind, like the sun in the 
tropics, illuminated all sides of the object upon which it shone, with 
a comprehensive and vivifying light. — The Great Cryptogram. 

Death as Natural as Life. Death is as natural as life; there 
is nothing horrible about it. It is superstition that has invested it 
with terrors and hobgoblins. Let the mantle of Christian charity 
cover the differences of race and social conditions, for under it all 
men can dwell together in peace and happiness. — Doctor Huguet. 

EGBERT EMMETT. 

We have seen the world celebrate the centennial of the plough- 
man poet, the sweet singer of Scotland, Robert Burns. We have 



22 t)ONNELLlANA. 

seen the Grerman race gather together to renew the memories of that 
master of the human soul, Schiller. The other day the Emperor of 
G-ermany unveiled the statue of that old Gothic hero who over- 
threw the Roman legions in the day of their glory. A few days ago 
our whole land celebrated the birth of that great and good man who 
led the forces of the American colonies through the War of Inde- 
pendence. Ireland, alas ! has none of these triumphant memories. 
In the midst of her gloom and desolation she selects as her idol one 
who, like herself, went down in disaster — one whose life, like her 
own, was a life of suffering and sacrifice. 
The poet has said : 

" Whether upon the scaffold high, 
Or in the battle's van, 
The noblest place for man to die 
Is where he dies for man. " 

It is easy to die for one's country in the rush and roar of battle, 
with the soul ablaze with combat. How different is it to be led 
forth by a rude executioner, the basest of his species, and consigned 
to a brutal and shameful death. Thus did Emmett die. 

Did he die in vain ? No. From generation to generation of Irish- 
men the flame of patriotism leaps along the hue of the ages. From 
the Irishman who fought Strongbow to the Irishman who now lan- 
guishes in England's prison the long line is unbroken — the chain of 
succession is complete — and far away into the future it will reach 
through many generations. ♦. 

Sooner or later that persistent, passionate patriotism will triumph. 
Under the ameliorating influences of modern civilization England 
will of her own accord do Ireland justice, or in some grand crisis ci 
her fate the conquered but unsubjugated race will spring to their 
feet and hurl down their oppressors. — Speech at St. Paul on 
EmmetVs Birthday. 

The Last Man. " The newspapers are wondering ' what will 
become of the last man?' As he will have all the money in the 
world, and nothing in particular to do, he will probably marry the 
last woman. Heaven only knows what will become of him then. " 

He will probably raise a family of last children, and the race 
take a new start. This planet will not get clear of mankind as long 
as there is a fragment of it left. They will breed and fight and steal 
on a good-sized chunk of meteor. — The Anti-Monopolist. 



EXTliACTS AND SJiLECTlONS. 23 

Drunkenness is Misgovernment. " In England they are 
getting nearer to the root of that dreadful disease, drunkenness. 
x\.t a recent temperance meeting in his diocese, the Bishop of Ely 
said that he attributed drunkenness not to a desire for liquor, but to 
the comfort of the public-house and the discomfort of their homes." 

In the last analysis drunkenness is misgovernment. Give every 
man a comfortable home, prosperity, hope and bright thoughts, and 
drunkenness will disappear from the face of the earth. And if 
the laws were wise and just the earth could afford all these blessings 
to all her children. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Animal World. Have you entered into the mind of the 
animal? Can you say that he has no glimpses of the Infinite? A 
barrier of incommunicability is placed between your soul and his. 
If it were removed he might perchance tell you more than you 
could tell him. Why do horses tremble at the sight of white objects 
in the dark? Do they beheve in ghosts ? And if so, — why? Tell 
us all about it. — Journal, 1S86. 

METALLIC MONEY AND CIVILIZATION. 

And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of 
Europe, fifty years ago, practiced bleeding, because for thousands 
of years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil 
spirits out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is 
dependent upon the superstition of a past civihzation, and the 
bankers of the world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of *< the 
tears wept by the sun " which was commenced ages since on the 
island of Atlantis. 

And it becomes a grave question — when we remember that the 
rapidly increasing business of the world, consequent upon an in- 
creasing population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, 
is measured by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, 
decreasing annually in production, and incapable of expanding pro- 
portionately to the growth of the world — whether the Atlantean 
superstition may not yet inflict more incalculable injuries on man- 
kind than those which resulted from the practice of phlebotomy. — 
Atlantis. 

The Future of Mankind. I tremble, my brother, I tremble 
with horror when I think of what is crawling toward us, with noise- 
less steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling 



24 DONNELLIANA. 

the dry leaves as it moves, and yet, with bloodshot, glaring eyes and 
tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. When comes 
it? To-night? To-morrow? A week hence? Who can say? — 
Ccesar^s Column. 

The Duty of a Gee at Man. A man of an ignorant, a low, a 
base mind may refuse to sympathize with his own caste because it is 
oppressed and down-trodden, and put himself in posture of cringe 
and conciliation to those whose whip descends upon his shoulders ; 
but a really great and noble soul, a really broad and comprehensive 
mind, never would dissociate himself from his brethren in the hour 
of their afQiction. — The Great Cryptogram. 

The Necessity eok Religion. But, say some, it will be ad- 
mitted that there is a great deal of immorality in the age itself, a 
loosening of the marriage tie, debauchery, corruption, peculation, 
and crime and violence. Granted ; but are the public schools 
responsible for this ? Is it not due to the fact that religion has been 
for years past, yes, we may say, for a century past, losing its hold 
upon the convictions of the adult population ? It is not necessary 
to go into the causes of this result ; it is sufficient to know that 
thousands are skeptical and hundrds of thousands indifierent. There 
is scarcely a leading newspaper in our country that does not sneer 
at religion. This result is to be deplored ; for, aside from the truth 
or error of the dogmas taught, the moral training and discipline for 
which we must look alone to churches and pastors is essential, in 
our judgment, to the preservation of virtue and the safety of society; 
and hence all the Christian churches are working together for the 
good of mankind. It is scarcely possible to conceive of an endur- 
ing republic based on intelligence without morality. The waljs^ofi 
the penitentiaries of such a country would simply divide the stupid;; 
kuaves inside from the intellectual knaves outside. — The Anti-- 
Monopolist. , 

MOENING. 

The trees shake out the fragments of the night, 

And the glad sun thrusts in his glowing hand 

Till the rough bark is splashed with laughing gold. — 1850. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 25 

Paety Slavery. The curse of our land is party slavery. It is 
worse for the negro than the old physical slavery. God have mercy 
on the man who permits another to do his thinking. 

" First slave to words, tlien vassal to a name, 
Then dupe of partj-; child and man the same: 
Bounded by nature, narrowed still by art, 
A trifling head and a contracted heart, " 

— Doctor Huguet. 
THE HIGHER ARGUMENT. 

But there is still another consideration. So far I have striven to 
conduct this argument with a view only to its political relations, to 
the effect of the questions involved upon the material welfare of the 
people. 

But there is something beyond all this. There are considera- 
tions as far above all this as the heavens are above the earth. To 
every man comes home this question: Shall I take my place in the 
ranks of that continuous and unending procession of events which, 
since the revival of civilization in Europe, has been steadily pressing 
forward over the world and through the centuries f Or shall I be 
of those frail and feeble ones who present their breasts as barriers 
and bulwarks against the rising flood which the breath of God is 
swelling and lifting over all the wrongs and iniquities of the world? 

For who will dare to say that in the long fight of the centuries 
error is not hourly losing blood and strength and life; that truth is 
not each day arming itself with new and more formidable weapons, 
shining each day with more glorious aud more effulgent radiance? 

Let us take to ourselves the consolation afforded by this thought, 
that truth is imperishable, and that no human power is sufficient to 
destroy it. It is a subtle essence, the soul of the material world 
The heavens and the earth may pass away, but truth shall not pass 
away. We have seen it in all the past hberated by the blows 
aimed at its destruction. We have seen it passing, upon golden 
wings, out through all the meshes with which the perverted skill of 
the human mind sought to entangle it. 

Let us remember, then, that in so far as we contribute, however 
humbly, to the cause of truth, we are identifying our temporary 
existence with an eternal work. This is a posterity which shall 
never die; this shall live and brighten and keep green our memories 



i^(j i)ONNELLiAi^A. 

when the descendants of our hodies have disappeared froni athbng 
the things of the world. 

For myself, I can see the welfare of my country only in those 
things which widen the opportunities and elevate the dignity of 
mankind. I cannot perceive the advantage to any man of the 
degradation of any other man; and I feel assured of the greatness 
and perpetuity of my country only in so far as it identifies itself 
with the uninterrupted progress and the universal liberty of man- 
kind.— /S??eec/i in Congress, May 2, 1864. 

Secular Education has Nothing to do with Religion. 
Neither can it he claimed that there is anything irreligious in edu- 
cation itself. There is no possible heresy in reading, writing, gram- 
mar, geography or arithmetic. The rule of three neither proves 
nor disproves any theological dogma; and the length of the Tom- 
bigbee or the Hoangho river throws no light on trausubstantiation 
or predestination. If our whole people were converted to-morrow 
to Mohajnmedanism or Brahminism, the alphabet, the rules of arith- 
metic, the forms of grammar and the facts of geography, astronomy, 
etc., would remain the same. In short, secular education, con- 
sidered in itself, has nothing whatever to do with morality or im- 
morality, religion or irreligiou. And we cannot therefore perceive 
wherein congregations of young people, to pursue their studies in a 
public school, are necessarily any more " Godless " than similar 
assemblages would be to learn the printer's art or the carpenter's 
trade. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

THE GREAT CRIMINALS. 

And when you come to look at it, my brother, how shall we 
compare the condition of the well-to-do man, who has been merely 
robbed of his watch and purse, even at the cost of a broken head, 
which will heal in a few days, with the awful doom of the poor mul- 
titude, who from the cradle to the grave work without joy and live 
without hope f Who is there that would take back his watch and 
purse at the cost of changing places with one of these wretches? 

And who is there that, if the choice were presented to him, 
would not prefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, 
a flight from world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than 
to be hurled into the hving tomb which I have depicted, there to 



EXTihiCfS ANi) SELECTIONS. !>7 

gfovel and writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, 
until death comes to his rehef f 

And so it seems to me that, in the final analysis of reason, the 
great criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who break 
through all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloody 
knife, the fire-brand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equally 
selfish, corrupt the fountains of government and create laws and 
conditions by which millions sufter, and out of which these mur- 
derers and robbers naturally and nnavoidably arise. — Ccesafs 
Column. 

The Persian Theory. The presence of such narrow-headed, 

bitter-hearted, small-souled men as McC in this world goes far 

to support the Persian theory that occasionally God turns over his 
creative power to the devil. McC — — was slipped into the world in 
one of these unfortunate moments. How else could he have got 
here f — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Egypt. And how mighty must have been the parent nation of 
which this Egypt was a colony ! Egypt was the magnificent, the 
golden bridge, ten thousand years long, glorious with temples and 
pyramids, illuminated and illustrated by the most complete and 
continuous records of human history, along which the civilization 
of Atlantis, in a great procession of kings and priests, philosophers 
and astronomers, artists and artisans, streamed forward to Greece, 
to Rome, to Europe, to America. As far back in the ages as the 
eye can penetrate, even where the perspective dwindles almost to a 
point, we can still see the swarming multitudes, possessed of all the 
arts of the highest civilization, pressing forward from out that other 
and greater empire of which even this wonder-working Nile-land is 
but a faint and imperfect copy. — Atlantis. 

GOD AND THE EGG. 

Science is merely knowledge of the materials of nature. It has 
never yet solved the enigma of that principle which makes matter 
move, grow, think and reproduce, which we call life. The philoso- 
pher can tell you the constituents of an Qgg in their due propor- 
tions; he might even put them together — so much lime, so much 
albumen, so much sulphur, so much of the phosphates, etc.; he 
might cover them with a shell, but he could not, until the end of 



28 DONNELLIANA. 

time; start within his composition that vital principle which is to 
convert these dead elements into flesh, blood, bones, feathers, 
brains, motion, life and capacity for reproduction. JBLere is a 
miracle which you can hold in your hand, and which yet transcends 
all the wonders of man's power. 

Is there not to this great globe of matter, the universe, a vital 
principle, a germ-spot, as there is to the Qgg ? Is there something 
in the Qgg which is able to construct that marvel of mechanism, 
the eye, out of inert matter, by processes which the microscope is 
too gross to follow, and is there no constructive power, no order- 
enforcing genius in the great cosmos, of which the ^gg is but an 
humble, infinitesimal speck? — The Anti- Monopolist. 

THE SENTIMENT OF IRISH NATIONALITY. 

The history of Europe gives us the record of more than one 
nationality stamped out of existence by an armed power. Poland's 
subjugation is as a thing of yesterday, and yet Poland sits to-day 
silent and passive in her chains. Hungary's last great struggle 
for independence occurred in our own generation, but to-day Hun- 
gary seems contented in her unnatural alliance with Austria. It 
is to the honor of the Irish people that, from the day when King 
John and Strongbow and De Courci trod their shores to this hour, 
they have never failed to resist, in spirit or in arms, the domination 
of the conqueror. For several centuries the Irishman has been a 
rebel. And there is no reason to doubt that he will continue to 
be such until his country is free. This long-continued, per- 
sistent, undying devotion to the idea of nationality is one of the 
marvels of the world. That flag [pointing to the green flag of Ire- 
land] floats to-day over no fortress, over no ship, over no govern- 
ment. And yet it it is honored and treasured by millions, as if it were 
the recognized emblem of a great, powerful and established nation- 
ality. This meeting in honor of Robert Emmett, and the thousands 
^f kindred meetings held to-night all over the world, are simply an 
-expression of that undying sentiment of nationality, that persistent 
love of the motherland, that eternal purpose that Ireland must one 
day be a free republic. — Speech at St. Paul, 1878. 

Fame and Glory. For I kept repeating to myself: How httle 
u ^'oAJg is glory ! It consists simjply of thoughts of you in the minds 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 20 

of others, and in a short time those others will be dust, and their 
very names have perished. And what is immortality ? Who were 
the great men that lived before Agamemnon? Lost! lost! And 
the day will come when the earth's generations will have forgotten 
Alexander and Napoleon. Fame? Fame is nothing. We leave 
nothing behind us on this earth that is permanent, except our influ- 
ence for^ood or ill; that goes on, visible to God, but invisible to 
men— a force in the affairs of humanity, spreading like a great, un- 
dying ripple in the sea of mind. Big or httle, eminent or obscure, 
we each contribute to that intangible net-work of earth-forces, for- 
ever renewing themselves with every new brain that is born into the 
world. Fame ! No ; let us do our duty. — Doctor Huguet. 

Love. And what is Love? Love is the drawing together of 
two beings, in that nature-enforced affinity and commingling, when, 
out of the very impact and identity of two spirits, life, triumphant 
life, springs into the universe. — CcBsafs Column. 

Night. 
Out in the hollow sky the darkness sits 
Owl-like and lone. The royal night strides on, 
Trailing his starred train over the dusky earth. — 1850. 
Fine Minds. It is a curious fact that when nature makes a 
fine mind she casts it in very much the same mold as all the other 
fine minds that preceded it — it looks at things and reaches conclu- 
sions in much the same way. It would seem, therefore, that intellect 
is not an accidental development, but a growth upward to a pre- 
scribed standard. — Journal, 1888. 

Evolution. If our thread of life has expanded from Cain to 
Christ, from the man who murders to him who submits to murder 
for the love of man, who can doubt that the Cain-like in the race 
will gradually pass away and the Christ-like dominate the planet ? 
— Bagnarolc. 

A TIMON IN WATTLES. 

Yonder is a rooster that has been whipped out in the great battle 
of life. Man dehghts not him — nor woman either. He reposes 
beneath a tree, far from the madding crowd. His air is somber. 
He seems to have been studying the great problem, " Is life worth 
living? "and to have decided it in the negative. The conceit — 



30 DONNELLIANA, 

which usually supports us all — has been pounded out of him. He 
has no illusions. Life is a mockery — a hollow sham. He is a feath- 
ered misanthrope — a Timon in wattles. 

But lo! A hen approaches— wandering, meandering — appar- 
ently without purpose ; her head down, seemingly intent on the 
sequestered bug. Never did man fall so low that one woman did 
not sympathize with him. 

" woman, in our hours of ease, 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please ; 
* "When pain and suffering wring the brow, 

A ministering angel thou ! " 

What a change comes over Timon ! 

With one eye furtively fixed on the distant tyrant, he rises and 
asserts himself. " He tvill peek as long as he has the spirit of a 
man left! '' He crows. He says in eloquent, inflectional notes, '' I, 
too, am a man! I defy Fate and the Devil ! " 

And the coy schemer sympathizes with the poor exile ; and with 
many little womanly airs and arts, — as if still intent on the 
ubiquitous bug, — she leads him, strutting and parading^ like a 
militia colonel on training day, into the high brush. Eve has 
climbed the fence of Paradise, and Adam is once more happy. — 
Journal, 1886. 

THE RATS. 

And the thought forever presses on me, Can I do nothing to avert 
this catastrophe ? Is there no hope i For mankind is in itself so 
noble, so beautiful, so full of all graces and capacities; with aspira- 
tions fitted to sing among the angels ; with comprehension fitted to 
embrace the universe! Consider the exquisite, lithe-hmbed figures 
of the first man and woman, as they stood forth against the red 
fight of their first sunset— fresh from the hand of the Mighty One — 
His graceful, perfected, magnificent thoughts ! What love shines 
out of their great eyes; what goodness, hke dawn-awakened 
flowers, is blooming in their singing hearts ! And all to come to 
this. To this ! A hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of 
slaughter. 

God is not at fault. Nature isnot to blame. Civilization, signifying 
increased human power, is not responsible. But human greed — 
blind, insatiable human greed — shallow cunning; the basest, stuff- 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 31 

grabbing, nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work ! 
The rats know too much to gnaw through the sides of the ship that 
carries them ; but these so-called wise men of the world have eaten 
away the walls of society in a thousand places, to the thinness of 
tissue-paper, and the great ocean is about to pour in at every aper- 
ture. And still they hoot and laugh their insolent laugh of safety and 
triumph above the roar of the greedy and boundless waters, just 
ready to overwhelm them forever. — Ccesar^s Column. 

THE PIONEERS OF THE WEST. 
If there is any one subject which the eye of philanthropy can 
contemplate with more satisfaction than all others, it is the first 
settlement of a fertile and beautiful country. We there see humanity 
in its most attractive aspects. The emigrant goes forth with his 
family, his train of horses and cattle, his household goods, into the 
new land which lies open before his feet, the richest gift of the 
Almighty. He passes along by fenced fields and pleasant homes, 
where but yesterday the wilderness reigned supreme, and he looks 

forward, 

" With all his future in his face," 

to that coming day when he, too, shall sit under his own roof- tree 
and look abroad over his own land ; when he shall escape forever 
from the hard and grinding hand of poverty and from 
"The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, 

The insolence of office, and the spurns 

"Which patient merit of the unworthy takes." 

When he strikes his plow into the earth it is the virgin earth, 
pure and sweet from the hands of its great Maker. The air that 
sweeps around him comes not freighted with the reeks of crowded 
and pestilential cities, the dreadful haunts of poverty and vice, but 
it blows from out the lips of heaven with health and beauty on 
its wings. 

The first settler is the corner-stone of all future development ; 
the entire structure of society and government must rest upon the 
foundation of his labors. His work shall last till doomsday. He 
first unites the industry of man to the capabilities of the fertile 
earth. The tide of which he is the forerunning, breaker shall never 
recede — "ne'er feel returning ebb, but keep due on" — until the 
wilderness is densely populated ; until every foot of land, however 



32 BONNELLIANA. 

intractable, is subdued; until the factories cluster thickly in great 
knots upon every falling stream; until cities, towns and villages dot 
the whole land^ until science, art, education, morality and rehgion 
bear the world forward to a development far beyond the farthest 
ken of the imagination, into that unknown future of the human race 
which we cannot prefigure even in our 'dreams. 

How many beautiful traits gather around these homes snatched 
from the wilderness ? How many fair women and noble men have 
seen the first light of heaven through the chinks of the log-house ? 
How many heroes worthy to be embalmed in perpetual history have 
grown up in the sturdy independence of the forest and the prairie ? 
By the side of such men the denizens of your cities are a dwarfed 
race. It needs pure air, pure sunshine, pure food, and the great 
stormy winds of heaven to produce the highest types of the human 
family, and to give to them that inflexible grain which is the first 
constituent of great character.— >Speec7^m Congress, May 7, 1868. 

The Power of G-od. And how much must that ruling, order- 
ing, controlling Power, parent of every form of motion, every 
capacity of sensation, every manifestation of life, transcend all 
that we know of the material world! Weigh all the stars, suns, 
planets, nebulae and comets, and add up the grand total ; then esti- 
mate all the forces of heat, gravity and magnetism in the universe, 
and, if the figures of man's arithmetic can express it, reduce the 
amount to tons or pounds, and what are they all to the mighty 
Power that centers and controls them all? Matter itself would 
seem to be but the outward crystalization of this great Force — its 
slave, its expression. From the heart of the earth to the center of 
the sun, and beyond, through all space, there is no spot where force 
is not perpetually existing and exercised. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Life Like the Heavens. But life is like the heavens: we 
never know what storms and thunderbolts may come out of it; we 
never know how soon the many-tinted cloud- wreaths which adorn, 
like picturesque scarfs, the drapery of the dying day, may turn into 
black and horrible tempests and lay cities low. The Fates that pre- 
side over the destinies of men seem to love the very grotesqueries of 
fortune. Now they lift up the half- fed boy to a throne, and anon they 
send forth the king a beggar and a wanderer on the face of the earth. 
At one moment they squeeze the heart of splendid success until it 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 33 

sheds streams of blood ; and anon they make the soul of the unutter- 
ably miserable to sing aloud for joy. And there is no science of 
meteorology that will tell us what is on the way to us out of the 
overhanging skies of our lives. We can only bow reverently to the 
unseen forces, and take all that comes with a stout heart. — Doctor 
Huguet. 

FRANCIS BACON. 

He believed that God not only was, but was all-powerful, and 
all-merciful, and that He had it in His everlasting purposes to lift 
up man to a state of perfection and happiness on earth, and that He 
had created him — even him, Francis Bacon — as an instrument to 
that end, and to accomplish that end he toiled and labored almost 
from the cradle to the grave. 

He was — in the great senses of the words — a priest and a 
prophet of God, filled with the divine impulses of good. If he erred 
in his conceptions of truth, who shall stand between the Maker and 
His great child, and take either to account? 

We breathe an air rendered sweeter by his genius; we live in a 
world made brighter by his philosophy; his contributions to the 
mental as well as to the material happiness of mankind are simply 
incalculable. Let us, then, thank God that He sent him to us on 
this earth; let us draw tenderly the mantle of charity over his 
weaknesses, if any such are disclosed by the unpitying hand of his- 
tory; let us exult that one has been born among the children of men 
who has removed, on every side for a thousand miles, the posts that 
experience had set up as the limitations of human capacity. — Tlie 
Great Cryptogram. 

The Twentieth Cektuey. Each generation found the condi- 
tion of things more desperate and hopeless; every year multiplied 
the calamities of the world. The fools could not see that a great 
cause must continue to operate until checked by some higher power. 
And here there was no higher power that desired to check it. As 
the domination and arrogance of the ruling class increased, the 
capacity of the lower classes to resist, within the limits of law and 
constitution, decreased. Every avenue, in fact, was blocked by 
corruption. Juries, courts, legislatures, congresses, they were as if 
they were not. The people were walled in by impassable barriers. 
Nothing was left them but the primal, brute instincts of the animal 



34 BONNELLIANA. 

man, and upon these they fell back, and the Brotherhood of 
Destruction arose. But no words can tell the sufferings that have 
been endured by the good men, here and there, who, during the 
past century, tried to save mankind. — Ccesafs Column. 

Plant Tkees. There is no more important question for our 
people to consider than that of tree -planting. What a noble monu- 
ment a grove of trees will be for you, good reader, long years after 
you have passed away ! Not a little piece of white stone in a grave- 
yard, soon to be trampled, perhaps, under the feet of clowns and 
cattle; but a great, leafy, arboreal monument; a land-mark for 
miles around, and a blessing to every living thing that dwells near 
it. The birds will sing and woo and build and brood in a thousand 
branches through a hundred generations, among the trees^o^^ planted. 
Don't pass away until you have provided such a monument for your- 
self. It is but a little thing to drop a seed or set a cutting in the 
earth, and God's infinite goodness does the rest ; your work is but a 
suggestion to the Almighty-; a hint to His great forces of sun and 
wind and rain and fertile earth to do their best. — The Anti-Monopo- 
list. 

A Little Tsma. An increased pressure of the hundredth 
part of an ounce of blood upon a microscopic portion of the brain 
may pervert the best judgment and change the whole course of a 
man's life. How easy is it, then, for external spiritual forces to con- 
trol the destiny of men and mankind. — Journal, 1883. 

The Age oe Peace. What a glorious sight it was here to-day, 
when, on that platform, we saw the representatives of North and 
South, under the waving banners of the greatest republic and the 
greatest government on Grod's earth, shake hands across the bloody 
chasna, and renew the memories of Bunker Hill and Yorktown. 
Never has there been witnessed such a scene of grand enthusiasm 
as that which then presented itself. 

The was is over. The feelings which accompanied it must die 
with it. This whole land must address itself to the great economic 
questions; the people must address themselves to the problem, how 
can we take the plunderer from our throat ? How can we lift up 
the downtrodden and the dejected f How can we strike down these 
continental evils which oppress us ! — Speech before Cincinnati Con- 
vention, May 20tli, 1891. 



EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS, 35 

Sunset. 
Red embers of the daylight ! Through thy flush 
Gleam the white ashes of the smoldering day. 

— The Mournefs Vision, 1850. 
^'BiLL King." There he sits, with his tail over his back, 
wrapped in the unapproachable atmosphere of his own unparal- 
leled reputation.— Joz^rwaZy 1880. 

Daniel O'Connell. Daniel O'Connell is a type of what his 
countrymen should be — of what they are at their best. With an 
eloquence unequaled in this century for brilliancy, depth and 
breadth ; with a magnetic fire, a mighty passion, that shook vast 
audiences as the whirlwind shakes the forest, he combined a per- 
fect balance and equipoise of mind which was never disturbed from 
its true center even by his own enthusiasm. While he aroused a 
most passionate people to tempests of excitement, he held them in 
check with a master hand. Conscious of the disparity in numt^"-^ 
of his race as compared with the nation which ruled them, he s" 
that an appeal to force was vain, and he threw all his powerful t 
ergies into the arena of legislation. He brought all the numbe.- 
the moral influence, the enthusiasm of the Irish people to bear upc 
the same object ; he battered down the solid walls of ancient bi^ 
otry and prejudice, until at length England yielded to the fury an 
persistence of his attacks, and honored herself by granting univer 
sal religious toleration. — Speech, 1875. 

Semitizing the World. The task which Hannibal attempted, 
so disastrously, to subject the Latin and mixed Gothic races of 
Europe to the domination of the Semitic blood, as represented in ■ 
the merchant city of Carthage, has .been successfully accomplished : 
in these latter days l)y the cousins of the Phoenicians, the Israelites. 
The nomadic children of Abraham have fought and schemed their 
way, through infinite depths of persecution, from their tents on the 
plains of Palestine to a power higher than the thrones of Europe. 
The worid is to-day Semitized. The children of Japhet lie prostrate 
slaves at the feet of the children of Shem; and the sons of Plam 
bow humbly before their august dommiow.—Cmsar^ s Colunui. 

A Political Fossil. '' Violate the chastity of the good old 
Democratic party!'' Why, we should as soon think of violatiu"- 



36 DONNELLIANA. 

the Judge's chastity. He is a much more tempting morsel. The 
Judge in his youth played with the megatherium and gamboled with 
the ichthyosaurus; and in middle age he read the resolutions of 
'98 from the poop of the ark, when Ham and Shem were fishing for 
gudgeons with a spoon hook. He struck out for Meeker County as 
soon as the flood subsided, and has been running for office in that 
vicinity ever since. ^T/^e Ami-Monopolist. 

SiTTiNa Dow:fir with the Dead. The old man's death set me 
to thinking what a strange, temporary world this is. Death is 
always busy around us, and his darts fly thicker than the sunbeams. 
Try to recall the faces of those you have known, who have crossed 
the> dark river, and what an innumerable caravan recollection sum- 
mons up ! What a banquet we would have if we sat down with the 
dead ! — Doctor Huguet. 

THE REPUBLICAN BULL-FIGHT. 

They have an entertainment in Spain called the bull-fight. They 
)rm a large ring, the people sitting around on the outside, looking 
Lown upon it. They lead a bull into the ring, torture and madden him 
)y arts with which they are familiar, and, when he is in a proper 
state of rage, a horseman enters the ring and begins touching him 
up with a spear. The bull becomes excited, and charges after the 
horseman, who retreats and circles around, and so the sport goes on, 
to the great entertainment of the populace. But occasionally it 
happens that the bull is too fast or too furious, and he lunges at 
the horseman so that his life is in danger, and when that crisis is 
reached there are a lot of light-limbed fellows sitting around on the 
fence surrounding the inclosure, whose business it is to rush into 
the ring and shake red rags m the face of the bull, thus diverting 
him from the object of his pursuit. And when the audience have 
been sufficiently entertained, the matador . gives the final stroke, 
and ends the sport and the bull together. 

Now, that is the kind of bull-fighting we have had in America 
these many years. The American bull, tortured by poverty, weighed 
down by injustice, and agonized by suffering, makes a fierce lunge 
at his enemy; but just as he is about to transfix him, the light-limbed 
politicians, who sit upon the fences of the inclosure, jump into the 
jing and shalie '^ the bloody sliirV^ before his face. And when the 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 37 

sport is over, tlie bull is dead. — Speech before the Cincinnati Conven- 
tion, May 20, 1891. 

A Political Truth. It is impossible to make a statesman out 
of the tool of a corporation. Omnipotence itself couldn't do it. Tbe 
virtues of a servant are not the virtues of a master. Mediocrity is 
of no value in a hurricane. — Journal, 1890. 

Smiles and Steals. There is nothing like calling a spade a 
spade, and a scoundrel a scoundrel. Our cold-blooded, villainous 
age has no earnestness in anything. It simply smiles and steals. — 
f(- The Anti-Monopolist. 

d A Ruined Country. America is not an old country. It is a 
1 new country, with millions of acres of fertile land awaiting settle- 
; ment. But it is a shockingly misgoverned country. It is being 
ruined by bankers, money-lenders, bondholders and buUionists, who^ 
will finally involve themselves in the common destruction. On its ' 
gravestone will be written these words: " Died of old-world theories 
applied, in the interest of capital, against the rights of the people. " 
— The Anti- Monopolist. 

Changing One's Mind. Senator H found fault with sen- 
ators who had changed their minds on the subject [referring to Don- 
nelly] , and said that he himself was of an obstinate race and did 
not believe in changing his mind. 

Donnelly arose in his might and proceeded to annihilate " the 
senator from . " This was the way he put it : 

" The senator is probably striking at me. He is proud of coming 
of a race noted for its obstinacy; but I do not know that that is 
anything to be proud of, for I believe the most obstinate animal in 
the created world is a jackass. The jackass is the only creature that 
never changes his mind, and if he were given a seat on the floor of 
this Senate he would probably boast of this quality." 

Mr. Donnelly claimed to be open to conviction, and went on to 
state his position as favoring the present law. — Neivspaper Beport 
of a Debate in the Minnesota Senate, 1890. 

Philadelphia. We found Philadelphia the same beautiful, 
prosy, hospitable city, with its everlasting uniformity of new brick 
houses and its narrow streets, which look as if a Western man could 
readily jump across from curb to curb. The weather is damp and 



38 BONNELLIANA. 

mucky, sloppy and raining. Every Philadelphiaii is born with ail 
umbrella in his hand, and his great anxiety in after life is not to 
lose it. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist. 

Mrs. Hog. You may clothe the hog in broadcloth, but he is 
a hog still. You may put a silk hat on his head and a gold chain 
about his neck, but he is nothing but a hog, and the bristles pro- 
trude through the jewelry. And Mrs. Hog! Clothe her in satin; 
hang her ears with diamonds; cover her mammary glands with 
Valenciennes lace, and yet she is nothing but a hog; and when she 
speaks you can hear between the syllables the guttural grunts that 
remind you of gorging and guzzling at the royal swill-tubs. — Speech 
to the State Alliance j Dec, 1890. 

A Gextleman Three Hundred Years Ago. In this coun- 
y every well-dressed, well-behaved man is a gentleman. But in 
England in the sixteenth century it meant a great deal more. It 
ignifled a man of gentle blood. A great and impassable gulf lay 
jetween " the quality," " the gentry," the hereditary upper class,, 
and the common herd who toiled for a living. It required all the- 
powers of Christianity to faintly enforce the idea that they wer© 
made by the same God and were of one flesh. The distinction, in 
the England of 1596, between the yeoman and the gentleman, was 
almost as wide as the difiference to-day in America between the 
white man and the black man; and the mulatto who would try to 
pass himself off as a white man, and would support his claim by 
lies and forgeries, will give us some conception of the nature of this 
attempt made by William Shakspere in 1596. — The Great Crypto- 
gram. 

The Chemist of the System. We should treat the stomach 
as our discriminating friend and chemist, — not use it as a slush- 
cart. — Journal, 1891. 

Judges. You put a small-minded man on the bench, and he 
loses sight of justice and right, and proceeds to help enlarge the 
already vast system of technicalities found in the books. He ram- 
bles away into wire-drawn distinctions as practical as those of the 
old monks when they debated how many devils could dance on the 
point of a hqq^Iq.— Journal, 1886. 

The Chinese Cure for Corpulency. There was a rich man 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. ill 

ill San Francisco, who was very corpulent and troubled with a pen- 
(hilous stomach. He consulted a Chinese doctor. The disciple of 
Confucius shaved his head, put a plaster on it, stood him in a cor- 
ner, and told him to stand there until the plaster drew his belly up. 
1 don't know but he is standing there yet. The old political parties 
in this country have had the people in a corner for twenty years 
past, drawing? up their bellies with the plaster of fair promises. 
The belly shrinks, but it does not rise. When the victim complains 
the doctor changes the plaster. He takes off the Republican pilaster 
and puts on a Democratic plaster. And still it draws, and still the 
victim waits — for both plasters are made out of the same materials, 
and bought in the same shop — the old shop of Monopoly. — 
Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 

The Pioneer-Press of St. Paul, Minnesota. It contains 
two hundred lies to the square inch. If a man reads it for an hour, 
he rises with a strong desire to steal something. In the name of 
honesty it defends the thieves ; in the name of morality it attacks 
religion; it combines pohtic bigotry with the opinions of Bob Ingersoll. 
Its highest ideal of journalism is continuous and systematic misrepre- 
sentation. It has never failed to defend a rascality which paid, or 
to attack a righteous cause which did not pay. The devil might 
paper the walls of hell with its editorial columns, and in his leisure 
hours chuckle over the ghastly exhibitions of human weakness and 
wickedness which they contain. — Speech, 1880. 

The Judgment Day. I drew a picture of death — not the 
judgment day of flarue, but the momentous act of taking rank 
in the invisible world, clad in the atmosphere of our deeds on earth. 
The segregating of the good from the bad; the repulsive crowd- 
ing together of the evil with the evil ; and then the beginning 
of new careers of work and influence upon the minds of those yet 
dwelling in the flesh, for blessing or for ban. — Doctor Hugiiet. 

On the Threshold. We are but beginning to understand 
the past : one hundred years ago the world Ivuew nothing of Pom- 
peii or Herculaneum ; nothing of the lingual tie that binds together 
the Indo-European nations ; nothing of the significance of the vast 
volume of inscriptions upon the tombs and temples of Egypt ; noth- 
ing of the meaning of the arrow-headed inscriptions of Babylon; 



40 I>ONNELLtANA. 

nothing of the marvelous civilization revealed in the remains of 
Yucatan^ Mexico and Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific 
investigation is advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that 
one hundred years from now the great museums of the world may 
not "be adorned with gems, statues, arms and implements from 
Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations 
of its inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of 
the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the 
thinkers of our day? — Atlantis. 

God Liftie-g- Up the World. And what greater guarantee 
of the future can we have than Evolution ? If God has led life from 
the rudest beginnings, whose fossils are engraved (blurred and ob- 
scured) on the many pages of the vast geological volume, up to 
this intellectual, charitable, merciful, powerful world of to-day, who 
can doubt that the same hand will guide our posterity to even higher 
levels of development ? — Bagnarok. 

The Imagination. The basis of Bacon's mind was the imag- 
ination. This is the eye of the soul. By it the spirit sees into the 
relations of things. This it is gives penetration, for it surveys 
objects as the eagle does — from above. And this is Bacon's meta- 
phor. He says: '' Some writings have more of the eagle in them 
than others." 

It was this descending sight, commanding the whole landscape, 
that enabled him to make all knowledge his province, and out of 
this vast scope of view grew his philosophy. It was but a higher 
poetry. Montaigne says : " Philosophy is no other than a falsified 
poesie. . . . Plato is but a poet unripened. All superhuman* 
sciences make use of the poetic style. " — The Great Cryptogram, 

A Strong Comparison. If you, the producing classes, attempt 
to defend your interests against the vermin that prey upon you, the 
vermin declare that you " want to tear down the pillars which sus- 
tain civilization," etc., etc. You can scarcely kill a bedbug now-a- 
days that he does not protest that you are striking a fatal blow at 
society. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Our Flag. 
Fling forth the flag that meets the stars with stars, ;.. ^ 

Light seeking light, and glory raised toward God. — 1851, ; ' 



EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 41 

Bill W . And thei-e, in the background, stands Bill W ! 

Faint, dim, uncertain, attenuated ; a thing of shreds, patches and 
saw-dust. 

"They brought one Pinch, a hungiy, Icau-faeccl villain, 
A mere anatomy, a mountebank, 
A living dead-man." 

Stat nominis umbra, — a suit of clothes and a name. His noblest 
intellectual capacity, to steal. His highest conception of patriot- 
ism, to corrupt. — Speech, 1880. 

The '' AuKA " of our Thoughts. And then my thoughts 
drifted to the people about me, and I could not help but think that 
each one dwelt in his or her own world of reflections, filled with its 
own memories and thoughts — of men and women, and deeds and 
things, each one totally differing from his neighbor. And it occurred 
to me, if the aura of every man's thoughts was made visible, what a 
sight it would be, — extending far beyond the narrow limits of the 
railroad car, overlapping each other, and reaching, in some instances, 
to the end of the earth. Each individual carries his* world of thoughts 
around him like a great atmosphere. In one case it is pure and bright 
and tenanted by angels; in another it is dark and gloomy, thick with 
scowling crimes and threatening demons. The raiment of these 
peoxjle touched as they sat together; they exchanged the 
little civilities of speech; and yet heaven and hell were not farther 
apart than the realms in which their souls dw^elt. — Doctor Huguet. 

JOB. 

Now, when we take this description, with all that has preceded 
it, it seems to me beyond question that this was one of the crooked 
serpents with which God adorned the heavens ; this was the mon- 
ster, with blazing head, casting out jets of light, breathing vol- 
umes of smoke, molten, shining, brilliant, irresistible, against 
whom men hurl their weapons in vain ; for destruction goes be- 
fore him : he casts down stones and pointed things upon the mire, 
the clay ; the sea boils with his excessive heat ; he threatens heaven 
itself; the angels tremble, and he beholds all high places. This is 
he whose rain of fire killed Job's sheep and shepherds; whose chaotic 
winds killed Job's children ; whose wrath fell upon and consumed 
the rich men at their tables; who made the habitations of kings 



42 DONNELLIANA. 

'' desolate places ;" who spared only in part '' tbe island of tlie in- 
nocent, " where the remnant of humanity, descending by ropes, hid 
themselves in deep, narrow-mouthed caves in the mountains. This 
is he who dried up the rivers and absorbed or evaporated a great 
part of the water of the ocean, to subsequently cast it down in great 
floods of snow and rain, to cover the north with ice; while the 
darkened world rolled on for a long night of blackness underneath 
its dense canopy of clouds. 

If this be not the true interpretation of Job, who, let me ask, can 
explain all these allusions so as to harmonize with the established 
order of nature ? And if this interpretation be the true one, then 
have we indeed penetrated back through all the ages, through 
mighty lapses of time, until, on the plain of some most ancient civil- 
ized land, we listen, perchance at some temple-door, to this grand 
justification of the ways of God to man ; this religious drama, this 
poetical sermon, wrought out of the traditions of the people and 
priests, touching the greatest calamity which ever tried the hearts 
and tested the faith of man. 

And if this interpretation be true, with how much reverential 
care should we consider these ancient records embraced in the 
Bible ! — Magnarok. 

Minneapolis. A city of churches, dominated by Bill King and 
Bill Washburne. God help us ! — Speech, 1880. 

To A Picture. 
There lie a thousand pleasures 

Within those deep blue eyes, 
And on those lips the treasures 

Of a thousand kind replies. — 1855. 

The Scalp of a Bald-Headed Man. An Eastern paper says 

we took S S 's scalp last fall. We modestly demur. We 

abstained from taking it, because, as a trophy, it would have been 
of no value. The world could not have told from what part of his 
person it had been removed. — Tlie Anti- Monopolist. 

Ages that Make No Histoet. It is the pitiable spectacle 
of the soul of man drowned in the glories of the flesh; of a nation 
perishing of too much prosperity; of the dead, flat waste of ages that 
make no history. Genius lights, with its crooked talons, upon the 



EXTBACTS ANT) SELECTIONS. 43 

uioLintani peaks of world-shaking convulsions. It finds iio resting- 
place upon the desolate plains of a money- worshiping, characteiiess, 
materialistic age. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Iowa Hotel. Cheap transportation doesn't mean robbing 
or ruining the railroads, but that intelligent policy, born of broad 
minds, which looks to a decrease of rates and an increase of trade; 
not to a decrease of trade and an increase of rates, like that Iowa 
landlord who kept hotel a year without a single customer, and then 
insisted, revolver in hand, on collecting his whole expenses for the 
year off the first poor devil who stayed over night with him. — The 
Anti-Monopolist. 

THE EFFECTS OF MISGOVERNMENT. 

Misgovernment has gone on in this land, ' supplementing tlie 
oppression which exists in the old world, through kings, emperors 
and aristocracies, until great numbers of our people are already re- 
duced to misery, discontent and turbulence. To break down the price 
of labor at home, the enemies of mankind have filled the country with 
importations of hordes of foreign laborers from the most oppressed 
portions of Europe; and these men, taught all their lives to regard 
government of any kind as tyranny, and all property as robbery, have 
broken out in bloody insurrections, which have shocked and alarmed 
the whole country. For the first time in free America, a consider- 
able part of our population is, to-day, held in subjection only by the 
rifle and cannon. The men who have, by their insatiable rapacity, 
brought about this state of things, are now clamoring for a " strong 
government;" that is to say, a despotism. The farmer should 
never forget that in all despotisms the tiller of the soil is a serf, in 
fact, if not in name. Our agricultural class has, therefore, the high- 
est interest in preserving the liberties of the whole country. Om- 
foreign-born farmers cannot desire to see this land go back to the 
conditions of Europe; and he is indeed blind who does not perceive 
that the whole drift of the current is in that direction. — Address of 
State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 

The Power of the Press. There is a mystery and a miracle 
to this day about that art of printing. The editor might stand and 
utter his opinions upon the street corners and no man would regard 
him ; they would answer him with taunts and laughter j but let the 



44 BONNELLIANA. 

same opinions be set up in cold type and printed on paper, and some 
occult power of civilization seems to attach to them; the coward 
cringes before them; the sneerer takes off his hat to them; and 
even the wise man scratches his head and says : " There must be 
something in that. '' — Speech to the Editors of Wisconsin^ 1889. 

The Wkath or a Little Mae- with a Big Hat. Irving 
Todd, in reply to some mild statement of ours^ dangles his legs 
down out of his hat, kicks them about wildly in the air, like the 
antennae of a June bug, and fiercely shrieks, " It's a lie ! " If Irving's 
size held any proportion to his viciousness the seat of Goliah's pants 
would not make him a night-cap. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Hypnotism. We have reached the limit of physical explora- 
tions. The Colons and Cabots are no longer needed. Our future 
voyages must be made by the soul of man, not his body. Out of 
this " Hypnotism" will be developed, in the future, the power to 
send the entranced and subjugated spirit on voyages of discovery 
to the planets, — yes, to the uttermost limits of the universe; and all 
that is shall be known to man. — Journal, 1890. 

Gee AT Cities. They* are, indeed, what Tom Jefferson called 
them, ''great sores." They are the mouths of graveyards. Last 
year 29,211 deaths occurred in New York City, an average of eighty 
each day. The numbei" of births reported during the same time 
was 23,744, which is greatly at varian-ce with the generally accepted 
theories regarding the relative proportions of births and deaths. 
Morally and physically great cities degenerate the people. If it 
were not for the fresh blood from the rural districts annually poured 
into their insatiate maws they would destroy themselves. Let us 
thank Ood for country homes and country breeding. They are 
the safety of our race and the salvation of our Republic. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

A Distinctio]^. If a man attempts to serve the people he is a 
demagogue ! If he serves their masters he is a " gentleman, a 
scholar, and a patriot." — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

Fate. 

Unequal fortune, misproportioned fate, 

On acts and thoughts and circumstances wait. — iS-5^. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 45 

THE INDIGENOUS CIVILIZATION OF AMERICA. 

It may be safely said the Spaniards encountered in Mexico and 
Peru an indigenous civilization in many respects higher than their 
own. 

The conquerors of Peru found that country covering a narrow 
tract of land along the sea coast, four thousand miles in length and 
three hundred miles in width, and containing a population of thirty 
millions, — nearly equal to the entire population of the United 
States. 

The civilization of the Peruvians was not of sudden growth. It 
had extended 'through many centuries. The people were agricultur- 
ists, and the pursuit had been carried to a degree of refinement un- 
known at that time in Europe. To this day the curious traveler finds 
upon the tops of the mountain ranges, in some cases thirteen thousand 
feet above the level of the sea, and amid the haunts of the eagle, the 
crumbling walls and vast monuments which bespeak the civilization 
of the ancient people. 

Nor was this civihzation rude and immature. Of its kind it was 
perfect. Almost every foot of their vast territory was brought under 
subjugation to the labor of man. So dense was the population and 
so energetic the efi"orts of industry, that the soil of the valleys was 
carried up on the backs of the peasants to the elevated sides of the 
mountains, and crops raised as high as the limits of vegetation. 

Of this unfortunate people nine-tenths have wasted away before 
the white man. The valley of Santa, for instance, which once main- 
tained seven hundred thousand inhabitants, does not now contain 
twelve thousand. The city of Cuzco, which at the time of the con- 
quest was larger than Chicago, does not now number twenty thou- 
sand souls. 

When we turn to the Mexicans we find still more striking evi- 
dences of the indigenous development of the Indian mind. 

That interesting people possessed at the time of their conquest 
a perfectly organized form of government. The monarch was 
elected from the royal family by the votes of the nobles. A regular 
administration of justice prevailed. For each great city there 
was a supreme court, with a single judge; and below these, in each 
province, an inferior court of three members; and below these 
again the local magistracy elected by the people. A right of appeal 



46 JDONNELLIANA. 

lay from one court to another, but the decision of the supreme court 
was final, and the judges were independent of the crown. The 
laws were registered and exhibited to the people in their hieroglyph- 
ical character. " The rites of marriage, " says Prescott, '' were cele- 
brated with as much formality as in any Christian country, and the 
institution was held in such revereuce that a tribunal was instituted 
for the sole purpose of determining questions relating to it." Tax- 
gatherers were distributed throughout the empire. The tributes 
consisted of" cotton dresses; mantles of feather- work ; ornamented 
armor; vases and plates of gold; gold dust, bands and bracelets; 
crystal, gilt and varnished jars and goblets; bells, arms, and uten- 
sils of copper; reams of paper; grain, fruit, copal, amber, cochineal, 
cocoa, timber and lime." Hospitals were established in the prin- 
cipal cities, for the cure of the sick and the permanent refuge of the 
disabled soldiers, and surgeons placed over them, " who were so far 
better than those in Europe," says an old chronicler, " that they 
did not protract the cure in order to increase the pay." — Speech in 
Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 

Pleasiis^g Eveet One. A Western paper says: " Wanted, at 
this office, an editor who can please every one. " The editor of the 
Anti-Monopolist will fill the bill exactly. Democrats take our paper 
to see us rap the Kepublicaus, and Republicans take it to see us 
give it to the Democrats, while the Independents are delighted 
because we denounce them both, and we are happy because our sub- 
scription list is growing. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Intolerant Religious Controversy. That Serbonian bog, 
whose dense waters " skylark never warbled o'er, "whose borders 
have never been reached by mortal man, over whose quicksands no 
compass or chronometer has ever established latitude or longitude, 
whose Mara-like depths plummet has never sounded, whose rotting 
bosom exhales only decay and death. — Journal^ 1880. 

WAS IT A COMET? 

What, now, are the elements of the problem to be solved? 

First, we are to find something that instantaneously increased to 
a vast extent the heat of our planet, vaporized the seas, and fur- 
nished material for deluges of rain, and great storms of snow, and 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. . 47 

accumulations of ice north and south of the equator and in high 
mountains. l 

Secondly, we are to find something that, coming from above, 
smashed, pounded and crushed " as with a maul, " and rooted up 
as with a plow, the gigantic rocks of the surface, and scattered 
them for hundreds of miles from their original position. 

Thirdly we are to find something which brought to the planet 
vast, incalculable masses of clay and gravel, which did not contain 
any of the earth's fossils; which, like the witches of Macbeth, 

" Look not like th' inhabitants of earth, 
And jet are on it ; " 

which are marked after a fashion which can not be found anywhere 
else on earth; produced in a laboratory which has not yet been dis- 
covered on the planet. 

Fourthly, we are to find something that would produce cyclonic 
convulsion upon a scale for which the ordinary operations of nature 
furnish us no parallel. 

Fifthly, we are to find some external force so mighty that it 
would crack the crust of the globe like an eggshell, lining its sur- 
face with great rents and seams, through which the molten interior 
boiled up to the light. 

Would a comet meet all these prerequisites ? 

I think it would.— Bagnarok. 

A Personal Devil. It is not to be wondered at that a large 
part of mankind believe in a personal devil, since there is so much 
malignity and hatred of all goodness in a considerable part of the 
population of the world. The doctrine of demoniacal possession, 
despite the doctors, would seem to have some ground and founda- 
tion of experience and reason to stand upon. We so often see evil 
done which neither profits the doer nor any one else, that one is 
constrained to look for its source iu extra-mundane influences, and 
to see in the unreasonable and unprofitable wickedness of man the 
impish instincts of some grinning demon behind the scenes.— Z^oc^or 
Huguet. 

The Greenbacks. " The Treasury has just burned $152,000 in 
greenbacks under the action of the resumption act. '^—Exchange. 
What offense had those $152,000 of greenbacks committed ? Did 



48 / DONNELLIANA. 

the people ask for their destruction ? Did the people ever haye a 
better or more satisfactory currency than those very greenbacks? 

The people had the use of those $152,000 of currency free of cost. 
Now they have, in lieu of them, $121,600 of national bank notes, 
on which they will pay, in taxes, for interest on bonds, over $6,000 
per annum, forever, m gold. And this is the result of one day^s 
it'ork! — The Anti-Monopolist. 

The Beginning of the Newspaper in England. Here we 
have the very beginning of the system which has culminated in the 
London Times and New York World. How strangely do Cymball's 
two rooms, his few clerks, his manuscript letters, filled with the 
gossip of barbers, tailors, porters and watermen, compare with the 
gigantic system of Eeuter in Europe and the Associated Press Com- 
pany in America, with telegraph lines under all the oceans, and to 
all the towns and cities of the continents and islands, and with a 
vast army of news-gatherers and correspondents over all the world. 
And think of those few clerks making written copies of CymbalFs 
weekly letters, to be sent out to a score or so of subscribers through- 
out the kingdom, and compare them with one of Hoe's gigantic 
lightning presses, which from a web of paper four miles long can 
print 25,000 copies of an eight-page newspaper in an hour. When 
we consider Cymball's two rooms and then look around upon the 
world we live in, one feels like sending up a shout of praise to G-od 
that He cast our lot in such a perfected and tremendous era. We 
can not help a feeling of pity for all who lived in those little, mean, 
dwarfed, helpless ages of the world's history. If Brown- Sequard's 
discovery is a reality, and he can, to paraphrase Burns, " mak auld 
men maist as good as new," we will stay here and enjoy this mag- 
nificent world, where all things are conjoining for man's happiness, 
until the over-crowded younger generation get up a rebellion against 
the old folks and drive them into the sea. — Speech before the Editors 
of Wisconsin, 1889. 

True Statesmanship. ^' The Senate bill extending the time 
for redemption of land sold for taxes in the counties of Dakota and 
Sibley passed the House on the 12th. Another specimen of Donnel- 
ly's statesmanship." — Hastings Gazette. 

Yes ; the statesmanship which takes more account of one poor 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 49 

mau, struggling against adverse circumstances, than of a hundred 
tax-sharks, in shiny hats, with their pockets full of greenbacks. — 
Anti-31onopolist. 

The Eagle. Flat-headed, grim, far-peering into space — with 
cold, cruel, carnal, unsympathetic eyes. — Journal, 1889. 

A VOICE comes roUing like an ocean wave 

Up the cold shores of silence. — 1850. 

The Product of the " Business Era." " Gentlemen," said 
he, " I am ashamed of this creature ; I am ashamed of him as a 
Northern man. The North is a land of heroes — the war proved 
that. I w^ant you to understand that it produces very few such 
scoundrels as this. They are the latest fruit of our ' commercial 
age;' of the 'business era,' proudly so called, which now dominates 
politics, rehgiou and everything else; in which, if a man steals 
enough and keeps out of the penitentiary, he becomes an aristocrat. 
God help the country where such Dead Sea apples grow on the tree 
of knowledge. " — Doctor Huguet. * 

The Stomach. A man's whole career in hfe may depend on 
whether his stomach is acid or alkaline. And yet there are fools who 
think they are the architects of their own fortunes. — Journal^ 1891. 

MONARCHIAL OPPOSITION TO REPUBLICS. 

Some such measure as this, Mr. Speaker, is necessary, not alone 
to define the rights of American citizens abroad, native-born and 
naturalized, but to arrest and resist the arrogant i^retensions of the 
monarchial governments of Europe upon this question. There is no 
doubt that it has always been the disposition of those nations 
to treat repubhcan governments, and especially our own country, 
with contempt. And in this connection I desire to quote from the 
London Times of the date of the 20th of May, 1814:, an extract 
which is significant as demonstrating the real ulterior purposes for 
which the war of 1812-14 was waged against this country. This 
was published within three days after the conclusion of peace be- 
tween France and England : 

" The British negotiators will not, we hope, discuss the impudent 
nonsense called an American doctrine about impressment and native 
allegiance, but will demand the safe and undivided possession of 
the great lakes, the abandonment of the Newfoundland fisheries, 



50 JJONNELLIANA. 

and the restoration of Louisiana and the usurped Territory of 
Florida. " 

The British Government sent out its armies and navy to enforce 
the doctrines and purposes of which we have here the key-note, and 
but for the disasters which overtook the British tleet on Lake Cham- 
plain from the guns of Commodore McDonough ; but for the defeat 
of the British forces at New Orleans shortly afterward by the heroic 
Jackson; but for the power which this nation then developed, that 
doctrine in all its atrocity would have been enforced by the British 
nation. And, sir, to-day every right we possess and exercise as a 
republican people is exercised in the face of the contempt of these 
monarchial governments; is possessed and exercised only by virtue 
of our power as the greatest nation on the earth. — Speech in Con- 
gress, Jan. 30th, 1868. 

A TEKRIBLE QUESTION. 

I hope the question will never come in this shape : Is it better 
that the rich should be made poor, or that the poor should starve? 
And mankind will make answer : We are not, any of us, entitled to 
wealth; but we are, all of us, entitled to life. Better that the pal- 
aces of the great should be dismantled than that the living temples 
of God should lose their tenants. 

But only the vast, cruel, unreasonable stupidity of the upper 
classes will ever permit the dreadful question to reach that shape. — 
Journal, 1886. 

THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION ON THE EARTH. 

Let us reason together : 

The ice, say the giacialists, caused the Drift. What caused the 
ice ? Great rains and snows, they say, falling on the face t>f the 
land. Granted. What is rain in the first instance? Vapor, clouds. 
Whence are the clouds derived? From the waters of the earth, 
principally from the oceans. How is the water transferred to the 
clouds from the oceans ? By evaporation. What is necessary to 
evaporation ? Heat. 

Here, then, is the sequence : 

If there is no heat, there is no evaporation; no evaporation, no 
clouds; no clouds, no rain; no rain, no ice ; no ice, no Drift. 

But, as the Glacial age meant, they tell us, ice on a stupendous 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 51 

scale, then it must have been preceded by heat on a stupendous 
scale. — Bagnarok. 

A Comparison. On the same ground Judas Iscariot might have 
passed resolutions denouncing his own little Credit Mobilier busi- 
ness, his little increase of salary to the amount of thirty pieces of 
silver, and thencefoi'th have claimed the right as a purified Christian 

to elbow Peter and Paul aside and lead the now dispensation. 

Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

The Eaft of Life. Indeed, it has sometimes seemed to me 
that we are all voyaging together over a rough sea, on a loosely 
constructed raft, full of holes. You turn to speak with a friend, 
and, lo! he is gone, in the twinkling of an eye — not a bubble left of 
him. You turn to another, and, as you converse with him, he drops 
out of sight, into the great deep, before your very eyes. You begin 
to realize that this wonderful structure, called Life, is made, not to 
carry its passengers, but to drown them; and that, but for the new 
souls which constantly clamber painfully up its rickety sides, it 
would soon be sailing tenantless over the dark waves. And you 
commence to study the loose, shifting planks beneath your feet, 
half submerged in the water, and to watch, with intense interest, 
every tremor in the fabric. The wonder is, you think, that the pre- 
carious structure does not altogether dissolve and sink in the billows 
of time, leaving only lifeless fragments in the midst of a dead 
universe. — Doctor Huguet. 

Society Divided. There are but tw^o classes in the world: 
those who create wealth, and those who appropriate it. — Journal, 
1888. 

One of Our Dangers. We boast, in this country, that phys- 
ical labor is honorable, and yet the children of the land are taught 
to avoid it as a curse. We have left the labor of the country to be 
performed by foreigners, until the character of American youth, 
especially in our Eastern cities, has degenerated into a shiftlessness, 
idleness and incapacity for honest work that must in the long run 
have the worst effects upon the national character.— J/«e Anti- 
Monopolist. 

God's Intention. God never set the abundant table of this 
world with intent that the gluttons should gorge to sickness, while 



52 DONNELLIANA. 

thousands starved in the ante-room. — Speech to State Alliance, 
Bee, 1890. 

Englishmen and Ameeicans. The Englishman celebrates 
every important event with a feast, the American with a speech ; 
which shows the superiority of our race, for, while our brethren 
acros-s the sea appeal to the stomach, we appeal to the mind, and 
hence it has come to pass that the English upper class are recog- 
nized as the best-fed people in the world, while the whole American 
population are the most intellectual on the face of the earth. We 
are willing to concede this much to the Englishmen — and to our- 
selves ! — Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 
The flap of the great eagle's wing, 
Sun- wakened on the mountain. — 1850. 

The Exaltations of Genius. Neither can we judge what 
great things genius can do in the blessed moments of its highest ex- 
altation by the beggarly dregs of daily life. Lord Byron said, in a 
letter to Tom Moore : 

'' A man's poetry has no more to do with the everyday individ- 
ual than had inspiration with the Pythoness when removed from the 
tripod." — The Great Cryptogram. 

The Settlement of Europe and Amekica. In fact, kindred 
races, with the same arts, and speaking the same tongue in an early 
age of the world, separated in Atlantis and went east and west — 
the one to repeat the civilization of the mother-country along the 
shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which, like a great river, may be 
said to flow out from the Black Sea, with the Nile as one of its trib- 
utaries, and along the shores of the Eed Sea and the Persian Gulf; 
while the other emigration advanced up the Amazon, and created 
mighty nations upon its head-waters in the valleys of the Andes and 
on the shores of the Pacific. — Atlantis. 

Memory in the Next World. One old man, who had been 
a faithful scholar at seventy years of age, had died during my 
absence, but his widow and his children were all there. I had ob- 
served the old man's eagerness for knowledge, tottering as he was 
on the very brink of the grave, and I asked myself whether our men- 
tal acquisitions in this world are carried away with us into the 
next. Why not ? It must be the thinking-principle that is immor- 
tal, and memory is surely part of the thought apparatus. In fact. 



EXTJiACTS AKP SMLECTtOKS. :>;; 

without memory there cannot be self-consciousness. We either 
retain our knowledge, or we live not. — Doctor Hugiiet. 

A Wise Decisiox. While Mr. Donnelly, as Lieutenant Gover- 
nor of Minnesota, was President of the State Senate, a dispute arose 
between the fireman and the messenger boys as to whose duty it 
was to bring the drinking-water for the use of the Senators. Both 
sides appealed to the President to settle the dispute, and he did so 
with Solomonic wisdom. He said: '^ It is the duty of the fireman to 
bring all the water used by him in kindling his fires ; the rest the 
messenger-boys will bring." 

THE IRON BAND OF A METALLIC CURRENCY. 

" Take a child a few years old ; let a blacksmith weld around his 
waist an iron baud. At first it causes him little inconvenience. 
He plays. As he grows older it becomes tighter; it causes him pain ; 
he scarcely knows what ails him. He still grows. All his internal 
organs are cramped and displaced. He grows still larger ; he has 
the head, shoulders and limbs of a man and the waist of a child. 
He is a monstrosity. He dies. This is a picture of the world of 
to-day, bound in the silly superstition of some prehistoric nation. 
But this is not all. Every decrease in the quantity, actual or rel- 
ative, of gold and silver increases the purchasing-power of the 
dollars made out of them; and the dollar becomes the equivalent 
for a larger amount of the labor of man and his productions. This 
makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. The iron 
band is displacing the organs of life. As the dollar rises in value, 
man sinks. Hence the decrease of wages; the increase in the 
power of wealth ; the luxury of the few; the misery of the many.'' 

'' How would you help it ? '' he asked. 

" I would call the civilized nations together in council, and 
devise an international paper money, to be issued by the difi'erent 
nations, but to be receivable as legal tender for all debts in all 
countries. It should hold a fixed ratio to population, never to be 
exceeded ; and it should be secured on all the property of the civil- 
ized world, and acceptable in payment of all taxes, national, state 
and municipal, everywhere. I should declare gold and silver legal 
tender only for debts of five dollars or less. An international 
greenback that was good in New York, London, Berlin, Melbourne, 



64 BONNELLtANA. 

Paris and Amsterdaiu, would be good anywhere. The world, re- 
leased from its iron band, would leap forward to marvelous pros- 
perity; there would be no financial panics, for there could be no 
contraction ; there would be no more torpid middle ages, dead for 
lack of currency, for the money of the nation would expand, pari 
passu, side by side with the growth of its population."— Cesar's 
Column. 

A Voice. 

Let not thy hfe — e'en as thy voice is not — 
Be marred by one false note or pauseful spot. 

A voice more sweet floats not, on wildering wing, 
! Where by the great white throne the angels sing ; 

A voice more sweet, e'en among Eden's bowers. 
Ne'er tranced the senses of the listening flowers, 

Nor ever hung o'er the despairing ear 
A tone so heaven-touched, so low, so clear. — 1855.. 

A CONUNDKUM. What is the use of shutting out the goods 
made by the pauper labor of Europe, if you admit free the pauper 
labor that made the goods^ — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

USURY. 

Money in itself is valueless. It becomes valuable only by use — 
by exchange for things needful for life or comfort. If money 
could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner 
of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor ; and as the 
enterprise would not then have to support a double burden, to- wit, 
the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his 
back, but would have to maintain only the former usurer, that is, 
the present employer, its success would be more certain; the .gen- 
eral prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and 
there would be, therefore, more enterprises, more demand for labor, 
and consequently higher wages. Usury kills off the enterprising 
members of a community by bankrupting them, and leaves only the 
very rich and the very poor, for every dollar the employers of labor 
pay to the lenders of money has to come eventually out of the pock- 
ets of the laborers. Usury is, therefore, the cause of the first aristoc- 
racy, and out of this grow all the other aristocracies. Inquire where 
the money came from that now oppresses mankind, in the shape of 



EX fn ACTS AND SKLKC'liONS. 5o 

great corporations, combinations, etc., and in nine cases out of ten 
you will trace it back to the fountain of interest on money loaned. 
The coral island is built out of tlie bodies of dead coral insects; large 
fortunes are usually the accumulations of wreckage, and every dollar 
represents disaster. — Cfpsafs Column. 

Pearls. Great thoughts are like pearls. One must dive deep 
into the great sea of suffering to bring them iip.—Journal, 1886. 

The Anglomaniacs. I would advise that the Anglomaniacs be 
put in petticoats, if it were not for the injustice it would do the 
women. — Journal, 1890. 

The Unloved. Love ! thou art the medicine of the soul I 
Life without love is half-death. Woe unto him whom nothing 

loves! Better were it for him that he were in his grave. Doctor 

Huguet. 

The Peosperitt of the United States not Due to its 
Tariff Laws. What has the tariff got to do with it? Imagine 
a man who would say " Forty years ago I was worth but $10,000, and 
my yearly income was but $600 ; now I am worth $100,000, and my 
income is $6,000 ; then I wore a blue coat, now I wear a black coat, 
ergOj my increased income is due to my black coat. " This is gener- 
alizing with a vengeance. 

It reminds me of the doctor who had an Englishman for a pa- 
tient, sick with typhoid fever. The Englishman had an unnatural 
craving for pickled oysters. " Well, " says the doctor to his friends, 
" he is going to die anyhow, so you might as well gratify him by 
giving him the oysters." The Englishman ate the oysters and re- 
covered. The doctor forthwith made the following entry in his note 
book: "Mem. Pickled oysters area sure cure for typhoid fever. " 
The next day he had another patient afflicted with the same disease, 
a Frenchman. " Give him pickled oysters, " said the confident doc- 
tor. They did so, and the Frenchman died. Then the doctor went 
home and made this further entry in his note book : " Mem. Pickled 
oysters are a sure cure for typhoid fever in an Englishman, but are 
certain death to a Frenchman. "—*S;peec/i at Glencoe, Minnesota, 
1884. 



56 DONNELLIANA. 

Editors. Editors have no business in this world if they do not 
strive to make men better and wiser. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

''A-E Illinois Pompeii. There is a Pompeii, a Herculaneum, 
somewhere underneath Central and Northwestern Illinois or Ten- 
nessee, of the most marvelous character ) not of Egypt, Assyria, or 
the Roman Empire, things of yesterday, but belonging to an incon- 
ceivable antiquity; to pre-glacial times; to a period ages before 
the flood of Noah — a civiUzation which was drowned and deluged 
out of sight under the immeasurable clay-flood of the comet.— 
Ragnarolv. 

Ae Aphorism. Every pohtical party has its helpless infancy, 
its gallant and chivalrous youth, and its corrupt and selfish old 
age. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

A Great Man. A great man is like a pair of boots. He con- 
centrates our attention twice : First, when he is new and we ad- 
mire him ; and, secondly, when he is old and we lament the holes 
which time has made in him. — Journal, 1879. 

THE CAT. 

I leaned down and petted a great cat, slumbering in a chair, and 
I said to it : 

" My poor brother, you are wrapped up in your environment of 
limitations as I am in mine. You cannot fathom my thoughts, nor 
I yours. But we are both pieces of the same fabric, cut from the 
same roll of cloth ; we are both children of the same great Designer, 
who cares for us and yet cares for us not. " 

And the cat turned over on its back, as if to say : 

" I would rather have my belly scratched than listen to your 
philosophy." 

And the cat illustrated the difference between physics and meta- 
physics. — Journal, 1890. 

A GOOD WORD FOR THE JEWS. 

We are reminded of these generalizations by a dispute which 
took place in Hastings the other day between two merchants, wherein 
one denounced the other in the newspapers as '^ a Jew." 

It never occurred to the worthy man who flung out that ferocious 
eipithet that the Jews were a civilized race, worshiping the One 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. \ 57 

Liviug God, when his ancestors were savages, bowing down to st':H*,ks 
and stones. It never occurred to him that Christianity was simply 
an amplified Judaism ; that Christ himself was a Jew, and that for 
a long time it was a grave question in the early church whether any 
one could be a Christian who was not a Jew. 

This worthy merchant probably did not know that the Semitic 
race, of which the Jews are a branch, originated the three great re- 
ligions of the world : Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism ; 
and that alone of all the races of antiquity they proclaimed, in the 
midst of polytheism, the great truth : '' There is but one God." Our 
white race of Western Europe never originated either a religion or a 
civilization ; it borrowed the first from the Jews and copied the last 
from the Romans. 

The Jewish race has been for a thousand years a race of outcasts 
and outlaws ; hunted, proscribed, persecuted, plundered ; fenced in 
in the corners of towns like a x)estilence; ostracised from society 
and despised of all men. Yet to-day England, majestic Protestant 
England, is ruled by a Jew — the Prime Minister D'Israeli. In art, 
in literature, in music, the Jewish race has been illustrated by ma- 
jestic names, such as Mendelssohn, Niebuhr, Auerbach, etc. In 
finance what name will compare with that of Rothschild? 

Give the Jews a chance. This is their country as well as ours, 
and they have a right to make all out of themselves that they are 
capable of without having " Jew, Jew," shouted after them. 

A great nation, like a magnificent piece of mosaic work, has room 
in it for all the race elements of the world. There is room here for 
Goth and Celt and Basque and African and Jew — yes, even for the 
Indians, if they can survive civilization. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Imitating the Creatok. We should work as the Divine 
Creator works: in non-essentials diversity; in essentials identity. 
In the vertebrata there is endless variety, but there is only one 
scheme of back-bone. — Journal, 1890. 

The East. Oysters, heat, moisture and dense population sen- 
sualize the race. Their literature runs to murders, their art to legs, 
their politics to place-hunting, and their statesmanship to sectional 
plunder. If the nation is to be saved, it must be by the dwellers 
on the great elevated, inter-continental plains.— /ot^rwa?, 18Q0. 



5B DOnNJ^LtiANA, 

The Woeld's Great Men. The Creator's greatest gift to mari 
is the world's moral heroes. Great cities sink into dust-heaps; the 
mines of Golconda are exhausted ; the plains of the ancient empires 
are desert places; but the work of the great men who strove to 
benefit humanity remains a perpetual force in nature, bearing new 
fruits century after century. Empires have passed away, dynasties 
have perished, nations and languages have become extinct, since the 
barefooted Socrates preached on the street corners of Athens, but his 
work and his thoughts remain a potent force to-day, even, in our 
modern civilization. — Speech on Daniel O^Connell, 1875. 

An Argument for the Birds. The grasshopper infliction is 
simply a disarrangement of the great balance of nature. They 
come from a region where there are no trees, consequently no insec- 
tivorous birds. In the great battle of life the withdrawal of a single 
element of destruction gives an undue advantage which is manifested 
at once. It is believed that a single plant, if its enemies and com- 
petitors were withdrawn, would in a few years cover the whole 
world. Look at it ! The progeny of a single female grasshopper, 
increasing 'fifteenfold, would in eight years produce j^^;e hillion grass- 
hoppers ! 

That beats a frontier money-lender's rates of interest ! And 
nothing else can. 

If, then, a prairie chicken gobbles a grasshopper, he gobbles the 
great -grandmother of five billion little red-legged possibilities. 
And when said prairie chicken lives off grasshoppers for a month or 
two, he nips in the bud more grasshoppers than the office-holders 
have stolen dollars. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

" Darwinism PLUS God. " I explained to them, as well as I 
could, the doctrine of Evolution : how, under a divine impulse, the 
higher rose out of the lower; the great out of the less ; the complex 
out of the simple; the noble out of the ignoble ; the pure out of the 
impure ; the civilized man out of the savage ; the Christian out of 
the brute. I showed them that Darwinism plus God was the true 
philosophy of the new age. — Doctor Hitguet. 

The Ballot-Box. What is a despotism? It is a country where 
reforms can only be achieved by the bayonet. What is a republic f 
It is a country where the people are absolute masters, with the right 



iJxrnAcrs' and sELKirrnms. 

and power to efl'ect all needed re.\)rms peaceably at the ballot-bc 
In a free country nothing counts but ballots. Parties, resolutioi 
platforms, public opinion, are only steps to the ballot-box; and|if 
they do not reach there they end in empty ii\\\— Speech to Granger^, 
1873. I 

BuENS. Burns' drunkenness was simply the protest of his spiril 
against the cruelty of his environment. — Journal, 1890. 

A Philosophical Reflection. How httle thinks the reticent 
and unsocial oyster, while it is quietly adding layer after layer of 
lime to its shell from the briny waters, that it is simply toiling to 
furnish some poor man the means of plastering the walls of his 
humble home. — Journal j 1879. 

THE WONDERS OF EGYPT. 

Look at the record of Egyptian greatness as preserved in her 
works : The pyramids still, in their ruins, are the marvel of man- 
kind. The river Nile was diverted from its course by monstrous 
embankments to make a place for the city of Memphis. The arti- 
ficial lake of Moeris was created as a reservoir for the waters of the 
Nile; it was four hundred and fifty miles in circumference and three 
hundred and fifty feet deep, with subterranean channels, flood- 
gates, locks and dams, by which the wilderness was redeemed from 
sterility. Look at the magnificent masonwork of this ancient peo- 
ple! Mr. Kenrick, speaking of the casing of the Great Pyramid, 
says: " The joints are scarcely perceptible, and not tvider than the 
thiclxness of silver-paper, and the cement so tenacious that fragments 
of the casing-stones still remain in their original position, notwith- 
standing the lapse of so many centuries, and the violence by which 
tliey were detached. " Look at the ruins of the Labyrinth, which 
aroused the astonishment of Herodotus; it had three thousand 
chambers, half of them above ground and half below — a combina- 
tion of courts, chambers, colonnades, statues and pyramids. Look 
at the Temple of Karnac, covering a square each side of which is 
eighteen hundred feet. Says a recent writer: '' Travelers, one and 
all, appear to have been unable to find words to express the feelings 
with which these sublime remains inspired them. They have been 
astounded and overcome by the magnificence and the prodigality of 
workmanship to be admired. Courts, halls, gateways, pillars, 



()() hONNELLTAKA. 

obelisks^ monolithic figures^ sculptures, rows of sphinxes, are massed 
iu such profusion that the sight is too much for modern comprehen- 
sion. '' Denon says : " It is hardly possible to believe; after having 
seen it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected 
on a single point— in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance 
Tv^hich their construction required, and in the incalculable expense 
of so much magnificence." And again: " It is necessary that the 
reader should fancy v^hat is before him to be a dream, as he who 
views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt 
whether he be perfectly awake. " There were lakes and mountains 
within the periphery of the sanctuary. '' The cathedral of Notre 
Dame at Paris could be set inside one of the halls of Karnac, and not 
touch the walls ! . . . The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from 
the Catacombs to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, 
pyramids and pillars. " Every stone was covered with inscriptions. 
— Atlantis. 

Why? If thcxpowers of government have been used to enrich 
the few, why should they not be used to enrich the many? Have 
the many less rights than the few ? If so, why? —Journal, 1890. 

Reconstruction. Now, then, comes the question to each of us, 
by what rule shall we reconstruct the prostrated and well-nigh deso- 
lated States? Shall it be by the august rule of the Declaration of 
Independence, or shall we bend our energies to perpetuate injustice, 
cruelty and oppression, and make of this fair government a mon- 
strosity, with golden words of promise upon its banners, a fair seem- 
ing upon its surface, but a hideous and inhuman despotism within it; 
the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century crystal- 
ized into a nation, with Dahomey and Timbuctoo in its bowels? A 
living lie, a rotten pretense, a mockery and a sham, with death in 
its heart ! —/Speec/i in Congress, Jan. 18, 1867. 

The Bovine Peocession. And I could not help but think how 
kindly we should feel toward these good, serviceable ministers to 
man ; for I remembered how many millions of our race had been 
nurtured through childhood and maturity upon their generous 
largess. I could see, in my imagination, the great bovine proces- 
sion, lowing and moving, with their bleating calves trotting by their 
sides, stretching away backward, farther and farther, through all 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 01 

the historic period ; through all the conquests and bloody, earth - 
staining battles, and all the sin and suffering of the race ; and far 
beyond, even into the dim, pre-historic age, when the Aryan ances- 
tors of all the European nations dwelt together under the saiuje 
tents, and the blond-haired maidens took their name of " daugh- 
ters " (the very word we now use) from their function of milk- 
maidens. And it seemed to me that we should love a creature so 
intimately blended with the history of om- race, and which had done 
so much, indirectly, to give us the foundation on which to build 
civilization. — Ccesafs Column. 

Washburne in Heaven. Why, Mr. Speaker, if all this be 
true, I tremble for my country. What if God, in a moment of en- 
thusiasm at one of the gentleman's speeches, were to pluck him to 
his bosom and leave this wretched nation staggering on in darkness 
to ruin ! I do not wonder that the gentleman's family manifest such 
an intense desire to get into Congress. I fancy the gentleman — 
for what would be our loss would be heaven's gain — I fancy the 
gentleman haranguing the assembled hosts of heaven — the cheru- 
bim and the seraphim — the angels and the archangels ! How he 
would sail into them ! How he would rout them — horse, foot and 
dragoons ! How he would attack their motives and fling insinua- 
tions at their honesty ! And how he would declare for economy, 
and urge that the wheels of the universe be stopped because they 
consumed teo much axle-grease. — Speech in Congress, 1868. 

What Might Have Been. But let us be merciful and philo- 
sophical in our judgments. Man is the creatu«re of circumstances. 
If the leaders of the North had dwelt in the South they would have 
been secessionists; if the leaders of the South had dwelt in the North 
they would have been abolitionists. Stonewall Jackson, if born iu 
Vermont, might have been rotten-egged in Boston as an abolitionist, 
and Lloyd Garrison, born in Georgia, have aided Toombs to " fire 
the Southern heart." If Abraham Lincoln's parents had moved 
southward into the Carolinas instead of northward into Illinois, who 
can tell what part he might have played in the great struggle; and 
if Ben Butler had been born .in Mississippi instead of Massachusetts, 
he might to-day be sitting alongside Jeff. Davis, looking out over 
the blue waters of the Gulf, and, like the Danbury man's goat. 



62 DONNELLIANA. 

Scratching his heard and trying to recall how it all happened.— 
Memorial Address, 1884. 

Knowledge. Knowledge is the accumulation of interesting 
iacts. That which does not interest humanity is not worth remem- 
bering. You must widen the brows of men by forcing new ideas into 
their brains. Thought is the food of the mind, and it grows with 
what it feeds on. It longs for learuing as the eye longs for light — 
it is the sustenance of the soul. — Doctor Huguet. 

Bosh. Let us be conservative. Let us not ignore the sacred 
claims and prescriptive rights of Bosh !— Journal, 1890. 

Dn. Johnson and Ossian. We are reminded of that intel- 
lectual old brute, Dr. Samuel Johnson, trampling poor Macpherson 
under foot, like an enraged elephant, for daring to say that he had 
collected from the mountaineers of wild Scotland the poems of 
Ossian, and that they had been transmitted, from mouth to mouth, 
through ages. But the great epic of the son of Fingal will survive, 
part of the widening heritage of humanity, while Johnson is re- 
membered only as a coarse- souled, ill-mannered incident in the 
development of the great English i^eople.—Bagnarok. 

The Lightning. 
Thou hast swept out the darkness at a dash; 

Amid thy blaze the startled heavens grow white ; 
And the dark face of storm, lit with thy flash, ' 
Lies with its horrid features wrought in light. — 1853. 
The Bakren Fig Tree. Talk is necessary ; but talk that does 
not fructify into deeds is like the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut 
down and cast into the fire. — Speech to State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 

The Tree of Knowledge. The editorial function is the high- 
est known to civihzation. Its business is to acquire facts and dissemi- 
nate information. Facts are the bricks, the stones, the masonry out 
of which the temple of knowledge is constructed. The newspaper 
is based on the great primal instinct of man — the desire to know. 
The business commenced when Eve ate of the tree of knowledge. If 
she could have subscribed, at that time, for a first- class newspaper, 
she would have learned all about good and evil ; and the apple might 
have rotted on the tree for all she would have cared for it. And 



EXTRAC1\^ ANU SKJ.ECTIONS. \ 03 

think of the conaequences ! think of a Wisconsin or Minnesota l^^gis- 
lature that knew no guile, wandering around Madison or St. ?aul 
next winter, with the thermometer at forty degrees below zero, ^lad 
in a bland smile and a fig-leaf.— Speech to Editorial Convention!' ^/ 
Wisconsin J 1889. ,' 

Francis Bacon's Aims. No man ever lived upon earth ilia 
possessed nobler aims than Francis Bacon. He stands at the portal 
of the opening civilization of modern times, a sublime figure ; his 
heart full of love for man, his busy brain teeming with devices for 
the benefit of man, with uplifted hands praying God to bless his 
work, the most far-extending human work ever set afoot on the 
planet. — The Great Cryptogram. 

An Aphorism. There can be no birth without a groaning.— 
Journal, 1890. 

EEADY-MADE-CLOTHING STYLE OF MEN. 

In the age of Queen Ehzabeth there were but five million people 
who spoke the English language ; now there are, in all the world, 
one hundred and twenty millions; but what one name, of this gen- 
eration, have we to set up against the immortal galaxy that adorned 
that wonderful era. Not one ! We erect great fortunes; but we 
do not build great men. 

' ' Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet — 
Where is the Pyn-hic phalanx gone? 
Of two such lessons, why forget 
The nobler and the manlier one 1 " 

The individual lessens as the race greatens; independent thought 
becomes an ofi'ense, and strength of character a crime. Society is a 
great shop, where the millions are turned out after the same pat- 
tern—like ready-made clothing. As Pope says, in the Bunciad: 
" "With the same cement, ever sure to bind, 
"We bring to one d.ead level every mind ; 
Then take him to develop, if you can. 
And hew the block off and get out the man.'' 

It is the age of poijitless uniformity and immensely prosperous 
dullness. And all this prosperity is but dust blown in the eyes of 
Apollo.— Doctor Huguet. 

Shakspere and Stratford. It would, indeed, be a miracle 
if out of this vulgar, dirty, ilhterate family came the greatest genius, 



G4 DONNELLIANA. 

the profouudest thinker, the broadest scholar that has adorned the 
annals of the human race. It is possible. It is scarcely proba- 
ble. . . . And it is to this social state, to this squalid village, that 
the great thinker of the human race, after association, as we are 
told, with courts and wits and scholars and princes, returned in 
middle life. He left intellectual London, which was then the center 
of mental activity, and the seat of whatever learning and refinement 
were to be found in England, not to seek the peace of rural land- 
scapes and breathe the sweet perfumes of gardens and hedge-rows, 
but to sit down contentedly in the midst of pig- sties, and to inhale 
the malarial odors from reeking streets and stinking ditches. — TJie 
Great Cryptogram. 

Our New Civilizatiok^. It is the new creed that whatever is 
lawful is honorable. In the old time many things were lawful that 
were most dishonorable. — Journal, 1890. 

The Rights of a Wrong. A wrong has no rights except the 
right to die — and die at once. Its existence is a reproach to the in- 
telUgence of mankind. Away with it ! Plow it up and sow the 
ground with salt. You cannot compound with the devil. — Speech to 
State Alliance, Dec, 1890. 

Mixed by His Early Training. One day last week, when 
the income-tax bill was under consideration, Donnelly got up and 
spoke in favor of it, saying that it was part of the great revolution 
which was inaugurated last fall, and which rolled up 60,000 dollars 
for Owen. Of course, he meant votes, and some of the Republicans, 
who are ever ready to laugh at the Sage, enjoyed themselves at his 
expense. But Donnelly caught on, and in that peculiar way of his 
said : " I mean votes; my early training as a Republican caused me 
to forget the votes and remember only the dollars." Tlien the 
laugh was on the other side, and it was a good, long and loud one, 
too. — From the Henderson {Minn.) Independent. 

The Soil that Grows No Poisons. " You are right," I re- 
plied ; " there is nothing that will insure permanent peace but uni- 
versal justice : that is the only soil that grows no poisons. .Univer- 
sal justice means equal opportunities for all men, and a repression 
by law of those gigantic abnormal selfishnesses which ruin millions 
for the benefit of thousands. ^'—CcBsar's Column. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. (i;5 

GRANT AND WASHBURNE DELINEATED. ! 

What is the meaning of this attack, Mr. Speaker? — becaus 
there must be some meaning to it. There was nothing in my lettJ 
to Mr. Folsom to provoke such a terrible outpouring of bile. Whai^ 
is the meaning of itf Why, it means this: As you know, Mr.' 
Speaker, the gentleman has for a long time cracked his whip over 
the shoulders of the members of this House. He has been the nat- 
ural successor here of those old slave-lords who used to crack their 
whips here. 

But his vaulting ambition has at last overleaped itself. Not 
satisfied to assail us here, to vituperate us here, he is going to mold 
the next Congress ; and lie is going out into our districts to tell the 
people of the United States whom they shall select and whom they 
shall not select. Why, my friend from Iowa [Mr. Price], as he tells 
me, meets in the newspapers of his district the assaults of the gen- 
tleman here. 

He is ranging the whole vast amphitheater. Why does he do 
this? Why does he do it, Mr. Speaker? There is a very simple 
explanation which has come out in my district, and which is one of 
the great arguments why they should send to this House the brother 
of the distinguished gentleman. It is that he owns General Grant; 
that he carries Ulysses Grant in his breeches pocket. 

Why, sir, the gentleman already feels upon his shoulders the 
cares of empire. He is already forecasting cabinets, dispensing for- 
eign missions, setting men up and putting men down. We can 
apply to him the language that Cleopatra used of Mark Antony : 
" In his livery 
Walk'd crowns and crownets ; realms and islands were 
As plates dropp'd from his pocket." 

Why, Mr. Speaker, has he not lived in the same town with Gen- 
eral Grant ? And should he not, therefore, perforce, be the War- 
wick, the king-maker, the power behind the throne ? I never could 
account, Mr. Speaker, for the singular fact that the gentleman did 
live in the same town with General Grant except by reference to 
that great doctrine of compensation which runs throughout the 
created world. The town of Galena having for so many years en- 
dured the gentleman, God Almighty felt that nothing less than 
Ulysses S. Grant could balance the account. Josh Billings beauti- 



6 DONNELLIANA. 

illy illustrates this doctrine of compensatiou when lie says that it 
^ a question whether the satisfaction of scratching will not pay a 
nan for the pain of having the itch. I leave the gentleman's con- 
stituents to apply the parable. 

Mr. Speaker, I bow humbly before the genius of Ulysses S. Grant. 
I recognize him as the greatest, broadest, wisest intellect of this 
generation. I cannot believe that be will degenerate into a puppet 
to be pulled by wires held in the hands of the gentleman from Illi- 
nois ; that he will degenerate into a kind of hand-organ to be tooted 
around on the back of the gentleman from Illinois, while his whole 
family sit on the top of the machine grinning and catching pennies 
hke a troop of monkeys.— /S^eec/^ in Congress, 1868. 

The Soul and Body. As we feel, in perfect health, a total un- 
consciousness of the body, its wants and its limitations, so we can 
realize how pure, lofty, powerful, serene, the mind must be, divested 
of the body. — Journal, 1886. 

The Fool Needs a Strong Constitution. The fool needs 
a strong constitution — for all the burdens of life are piled on him, 
and he grins and is tickled. He feels that God intended him to 
husk the corn for another, and hve on the husks. He is happy. 
He is a conservative. He is opposed to all radicals. He don't be- 
lieve in the Farmers' Alliance. To him the rich man is a visible 
god in breeches. Nothing else ever was so completely happy as a 
fool. Omnipotence, that made the universe, can do nothing with a 

fool except kill him. And God so pities him that He lets him 

live for the amusement of the angels ; and all heaven holds its sides 
and roars with laughter over the antics of the fool. — Speech to State 
Alliance, Dec, 1890. 

Happiness. As happy as a dog in the house of a childless 
woman. — Journal, 1890. 

A Materialistic Age. It is hard to tell, I thought, how far 
a man is fortunate or unfortunate in his generation. In many 
respects this is the greatest age the world has ever known. Never 
before did humanity possess such vast powers over nature; never 
before did such huge populations dwell in such a golden atmos- 
phere of peace and enlightenment. And yet all these things 
may be accompanied by such a denial of spiritual life; by such 



EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS, 

shallow, dust-griibbiug materialism ; by such a dead-rot of servilii 
and heartlessness and wealth-grabbing and Mammon- worship, i 
society, that the fair form of Progress becomes rotten and worm 
eaten; and that which we mistake for the pulsations of breathing 
life may he but the convulsive struggles of the filthy, swarming 
vermin beneath the infected skin. — Doctor Hiiguct. 

The Pride of the North ix the Courage of the South. 
And that demand is just and right; and why should it he refused? 
Why should it be denied us by invoking the memories of the war? I 
am an old Republican, a Northern man, from the extreme Northern 
tier of States; but I say this, my friends: while we think the South 
was wrong in invoking the goddess of civil war in this land, yet we 
see clearly that it was no merely criminal outbreak that made this 
rebellion. It was made by men who believed, from the standpoint 
of their education, that they were right; and they brought to the 
defense of their principles a courage, a heroism, a chivalry, such as 
the world has hardly ever seen before. For all those noble qualities 
the people of this North can be proud. It would be a disgrace to us 
if one-half the territory of this country had been inhabited by a caitiff 
race. Their courage and heroism is part of the heritage of Ameri- 
can glory; and the heart of America— I say it as a Northerner and 
as an old Republican — the heart of America is big enough and 
generous enough to enshrine in the recesses of its tenderest mem- 
ories, not only the names of Grant and Lincoln, but the names of 
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. And as we pass away from 
that dark and terrible time, clearer and clearer will the American 
people perceive that we must give up the recriminations of the past, 
and become ia fact, as we are in name, one people, — Speech at the 
Cincinnati Convention, May 20, JSOl. 

The Men to Blame. Pomeroy^s Democrat remarks: 
" Three men in Waterford, Pa., were indicted at Erie for tarring 
and feathering a woman of doubtful character, and after trial weie 
found guilty and sentenced from one to ten years each in the peni- 
tentiary." 

It would have been much better to have tarred and feathered 
the men who visited the woman. But the world has not yet oat- 
grown the sentiment of the middle ages, that woman is the r:ie:iiv 
and tempti'ess of man, a sort of she-Satan. When Adam put the 
blame of the apple upon Eve, he would probably have tarred and 



DONNELLIANA. 

aathered her also, if he had had the materials handy. — The Anti- 



LlFE. 

■■-''■ I stand like him who, in the days gone by, 

From Darien's rocks looked o'er an unknown sea ; 
Below the rising waves are mounting high, 

And passion's gales sigh out in prophecy. 
I feel within what may make good or ill, 

(Man's heart the heaven whence clouds or sunshine come) ; 
But shall the strong tides of the flooding will 

My lone bark bear, or bury it in foam 1 
■ Dark ocean, — life, — the night is on thy breast; 

And fortune urges where I may not rest. — 1849. 

POPULAE MYTHS. 

In primitive races mind repeats mind for thousands of years. If 
a tale is told at a million hearth-fires, the probabilities are small, 
indeed, that any innovation at one hearth-flre, however ingenious, 
will work its way into and modify the narration at all the rest. 
There is no printing-press to make the thoughts of one man the 
thoughts of thousands. While the innovator is modifying the tale, 
to his own satisfaction, to his immediate circle of hearers, the nar- 
rative is being repeated in its unchanged form at all the rest. The 
doctrine of chances is against innovation. The majority rules. 

When, however, a marvelous tale is told to the new generation 
— to the httle ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping 
mouths — they naturally ask, " WJiere did all this occur?" The 
narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, " On yonder 
mountain- top, " or " In yonder cave." 

The story has come down without its geography, and a new 
geography is given it. 

Again, an ancient word or name may have a signification in the 
language in which the story is told different from that which it pos- 
sessed in the original dialect, and, in the effort to make the old fact 
and the new language harmonize, the story-teller is forced, gradu- 
ally, to modify the narrative; and, as this lingual difficulty occurs 
at every fireside, at every telling, an ingenious explanation comes 
at last to be generally accepted, and the aneient myth remains 
dressed in a new suit of liuguistic clothes. — Bagnarolu 



EXTRACTS AKl) SF.LECTIOKS. G9 

Keligion. With niauy, reli«;-ion is8iiiii)ly a bigscare.--./o«r/«(<^ 

Sowing Greatness to Posterity. And was not Bacon, nii these 
appeals to national heroism, ^^ sowing greatness to 2^osteritg," and 
helping to create or maintain that warlike " breed " which has since 
carried the banners of conqnest over a great part of the earth's sur- 
face f One can imagine how the eyes of those swarming audiences 
at the Fortune and the Curtain nuist have snapped with dehght, at 
the pictures of English valor on the field of Agincourt, as depicted 
in Henry V., or at the representation of that tremendous soldier 
Talbot, in Henry VI., dying Kke a lion at bay, with his noble boy by 
his side. How the prentices nuist ha\ e roared ! How the mob must 
have raved ! How even the gentlemen must have drawn deep 
breaths of x)atriotic inspiration from such scenes ! Imagine the Lon- 
don of to-day going wild over the work of some great genius de- 
picting, in the midst of splendid poetry, Wellington and Nelson ! 
— The Great Cryptogram. 

A Declaration of Principle. Every effort of the laboring 
classes to increase the sum of their comforts and enjoyments should 
meet with the approval of all good men. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Law. a thing they call law, which is five-tenths trick, four- 
tenths precedent, and one-tenth justice. — Journal, 1886. 

Collecting Debts in the Next World. What a pity there is 
no way to take a transcript of a judgment and enter it up in the 
next world ! The spiritual medium who will devise that will earn a 
monument at the hands of W^all Street. Wouldn't it be jolly to see 
a spiritual sherilf hunting around in heaven for the maker of one of 
those old Minnesota five per cent, per month notes, and threatening 
to sell the wings off his back if he didn't pay up ! — The Anti-Monopo- 
list. 

History. History is simply 7w5- story, and depends on who tells 
it. — Journal, 1890. 

Liberty. Wherever man is oppressed the laws are at fault. 
Either they have omitted to strike down some subtle form of injust- 
ice or they have maintained it. Civihzation and liberty will yet 
turn the blizzard-swept plains of the Saskatchewan into gardens of 
plenty and beauty. Oppression and injustice have for centuries cov- 



70 DONNELLIANA. 

erecl the fairest regions of the old world with wretchedness and 
misery, more appalling and destructive than the snow-thickened 
tornadoes of the north. Educate the mind of man and unshackle 
his hands, and there is little in nature which he cannot subdue. The 
earth is made for man and his handmaid — liberty. — Memorial 
Address J 1884. 

God axd the Humai^ Mind. And I said to them that so vast, 
so wonderful, so adorable was this Being that He alone was worthy 
of study and contemplation by the thoughtful mind; and that nature, 
man and all things that are within the universe are entitled to con- 
sideration simply because they are part of the outflow of this divine 
power. I said to them that God was invisible, even as our own 
minds are invisible ; that He had no shape, even as our own minds 
are without shape ; that He was recognized by His works, even as 
our own minds are known to one another by their influence on mat- 
ter. That he who helped to make free the mind of man released 
a part of God from the trammels and thraldom of matter, and gave 
tTiought spiritual wings upon which it could traverse the universe. — 
Doctor Hiiguet. 

What the Declaration of Independence Means. There 
was a time when emperors rode in ox-carts with solid log wheels and 
fed like wild beasts. If any one had told Charlemagne that in a few 
centuries the yeomanry, the traders, the leeches, the lawyers, 
would enjoy a hundred-fold more of the comforts and luxuries of 
life than he did, the great king would have chopped his head off as 
a false prophet or have chained him as a lunatic. The Declaration 
of Independence means that, eventually, every toiler in the world 
shall enjoy all the education, all the comforts and luxuries, now pos- 
sessed by the middle classes. That is the direction in which God is 
moving. It was for that He reserved this continent. And who 
will be hurt by it '/ Is the king any worse off because the bourgeoisie 
are intelhgent, happy and cultivated ? Is the security of society 
decreased? Will the republic be less powerful and permanent when 
every industrious man in it has a comfortable home, a plentiful 
larder, and an educated mind ; when every peasant, as Henry IV. 
said, "has a chicken in the pot"'? Can a republic endure if the 
majority are wretched, ignorant and discontented? — Memorial 



ExmAcrs ANT) r?:lections;. 71 

TiiK Dominant Caste. Aiul \ cried out aloud: •' O my white 
brethren I Little do you appreciate what a gl(>ry it is to belong to 
the doniiiiaiit caste; what a hell it is to fall into the subject caste! 
Little do you appreciate your race-advantages, to be 'the beauty of 
the world, the paragon of animals,' the perfection of your species. 
Little do you think what a boundless debt of gratitude you owe to 
the good God, for his mercies, to be expressed in boundless tender- 
ness and generosity to your unfortunate brethren." — Doctor Huguet, 

Ambition. 
The mind that takes an eagle's aim 

Will find an eagle's wings ; 
And sun-like soul shall set its claim 

Above earth's little things. — 1853. 

CIVILIZATION AND BARBARISM. 

Civilization is not communicable to all ; many savage tribes are 
incapable of it. There are two great divisions of mankind, the civ- 
ilized and the savage; and, as we shall show, every civihzed race in 
the world has had something of civilization from the earhest ages; 
and as '' all roads lead to Rome, " so all the converging lines of civ- 
ilization lead to Atlantis. The abyss between the civilized man and 
the savage is simply incalculable ; it represents not alone a differ- 
ence in arts and methods of life, but m the mental constitution, the 
instincts^ and the predisposition of the soul. The child of the civ- 
ilized races, in his sports, manufactures water-wheels, wagons, and 
houses of cobs; the savage boy amuses himself with bows and 
arrows. The one belongs to a building and creating race; the other 
to a wild, hunting stock. This abyss between savagery and civili- 
zation has never been passed by any nation, through its own original 
force, and without external influences, during the Historic Period : 
those who were savages at the dawn of history are savages still. 
Barbarian slaves may have been taught something of the arts of 
their masters, and conquered races have shared some of the advan- 
tages possessed by their conquerors ; but we will seek in vain for 
any example of a savage people developing civilization of and 
among themselves. I may be reminded of the Gauls, Goths and 
Britons; but these were not savages; they possessed written lan- 
guages, poetry, oratory and history; they were controlled by relig- 



72 DONNELLIANA. 

ious ideas ; they believed in God and the immortahty of the soul, 
and in a state of rewards and punishments after death. Wherever 
the Romans came in contact with Gauls, or Britons, or German 
tribes, they found them armed with weapons of iron. The Scots, 
according to Tacitus, used chariots and iron swords in the battle of 
the Grampians — " enormes gladii sine mucrone." The Celts of 
Gaul are stated by Diodorus Siculus to have used iron-headed 
spears and coats-of-mail, and the Gauls who encountered the Ro- 
man arms, in B.C. 222, were armed with soft iron swords, as well as 
at the time when Caesar conquered their country. Among the 
Gauls men would lend money to be repaid in the next world, and 
we need not add that no Christian people has yet reached that sub- 
hme height of faith; they cultivated the ground, built houses and 
walled towns, wove cloth, and employed wheeled vehicles; they 
possessed nearly all the cereals and domestic animals we have, and 
they wrought in iron, bronze and steel. The Gauls had even in- 
vented a machine on wheels to cut their grain, thus anticipatmg 
our reapers and mowers by two thousand years. The difference 
between the civilization of the Romans under Julius Caesar and the 
Gauls under Vercingetorix was a difference in degree and not in 
kind. The Roman civilization was simply a development and per- 
fection of the civilization possessed by all the European populations; 
it was drawn from the common fountain of Atlantis. — Atlantis. 
The Sea-boy. 
As the sad sea-boy, o'er the evening main, 
Sends the long sorrow of some home- taught strain; 
Now on the wild-gushed sea-wind softly sighing; 
Now with the waves' fall lingeringly dying ; 
While rocks the mast above the swaying sea, 
And white the wave the scattered foam is flinging, 
And from the upfurled shrouds, all mournfully, 
That sad, sweet voice is singing. — 1856. 
Falstaff's Half-pennyworth of Bread. There is a misap- 
prehension about the convention. It was started ostensibly as a 
conference of producers. I see here a galaxy of notable business 
men and lawyers. I stand almost alone here as the representative 
of the great producing class. When Falstaff fell asleep behind the 
arras, Prince Hal searched his pockets, and found nothing in them 



EXTRACTS AXJ) SE]J<:CTI0NS. l:\ 

but 11 tavcru bill, for a large (luantity of li([uor and a very small 
amount of bread. " O monstrous! " said Prince Hal; " but one-half- 
pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack." Gentlemen, 
in this convention I represent the bread. [Great laughter and ap- 
plause.]— yS^^^eec/i in Northtvestern Waterivays Contention, 1885. 

God's Cake of His World. If I am right, despite these incalcu- 
lable tons of matter piled on the earth, despite heat and cyclones 
and darkness and ice and floods, not even a tender tropical plant fit 
to adorn or sustain man's life was blotted out ; not an animal valu- 
able for domestication was exterminated ; and not even the great 
inventions to which man had attained during the Tertiary Age were 
lost. Nothing died but that which stood in the pathway of man's 
development, — -the monstrous animals, the Neanderthal races, the 
half-human creatures intermediate between man and the brute. The 
great centers of human activity to-day in Europe and America are 
upon the Drift-deposits; the richest soils are compounded of the 
so-called glacial clays. Doubtless, too, the human brain was forced 
(luring the Drift Age to higher reaches of development under the 
terrible ordeals of the hour. — Bagnarok. 

The Only Politics Worth Studying. The only politics^ , !• 
worth studying is the amelioration of the condition of the great^ 
masses of mankind. — Memorial Address, 1884, \ 

The Details of Human Destiny Part of the Mechanism 
of the Universe. Is it j)ossible that the great and perfect mechan- 
ism of the universe, which has endured for so many billions of years, 
does not extend to the details of men's lives? Is not God building- 
up His splendid civilization, on this planet, with our life-works, even 
as He fattens the productive soil with the death of plants and ani- 
mals ? Who can ask the purpose of his own being, unless he can 
comprehend the whole scheme of Divinity, broad enough to inclose 
the fathomless depths of the stars, and enduring enough to reach 
throughout eternity? Can the plant-root, as it reaches down into 
the earth and eliminates organic matter for its sustenance, ask 
what living thing died, centuries ago, to furnish it with that store- 
house of food ? Can the artist tell at what point, in the long line of 
his peasant ancestors, there was imported into their blood that 
touch of genius which has flowered out, in himself, in beauty and 



74 DonNJ^LLtANA. 

glory, for the pleasure of man and the up-building of society? 
— Doctor Huguet. 

Interest oi^ Money. " But what would you do, my good Ga- 
briel, " said Maximilian, smiling, " if the reformation of the world 
were placed in your hands ? Every man has an Utopia in his head. 
Give me some idea of yours." 

*' First, " I said, '' I should do away with all interest on 
money. Interest on money is the root and ground of the world's 
troubles. It puts one man in a position of safety, while another is 
in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a radical 
distinction in human society. " — CcBsafs Column. 

NO NECESSITY FOR APPARITIONS. 

The mind within the skull is as vast as all nature outside of it ; 
for the universe can float in the conception of a great mind, like a 
boat in the ocean. 

Why should God paint pictures of ghosts on the external pano- 
rama of nature, when He has the mind of man as an universal 
theater, on whose stage He can present His infinite phantas- 
magoria ? 

Do you suppose that He who made this brain, with its gorges and 
valleys of gray matter, and its network of interlacing threads, can- 
not mold it to any shape and direct it to any purpose He sees fit ? 

And, if this is true of one man, why not of one million ? And 

he is indeed shallow who does not feel in the operations of the 

mind the fingers of the Deity. God's especial temple is, not on the 

mountain tops or in the groves, but in the soul of man. — Journal, 

1886. 

Thee. 

All sense, all fear, all grief, all earth, all sin, 

Forgot shall be ; 
Knit unto each, — to each kith, kind and kin, — 
Life, like these rhyming verses, shall begin 

And end in — thee. — Ccesar^s Column. 

THE UNIVERSAL MIND. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson grasped the whole answer to this question 
when he said: '^The true poet and the true philosopher are one." 
The complete mind (and we are reminded of Ulysses' application of 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 75 

the word to Achilles, " thou great and complete man") enfolds iu its 
orb all the realm of thought ; it perceives not alone the nature of 
things, hut the subtle light of beauty which irradiates them ; it is 
able not only to trace the roots of facts into the dead, dull, material 
earth, but to follow the plant as it rises in the air and find in the 
flower thoughts too deep for tears. The purpose of things, the 
wherefore of things and the glory of things are all one to the God 
who made them, and to the great broad brain to which He has given 
power enough to comprehend them. But such minds are rare. 
Science tells us that the capacity of memory underhes those por- 
tions of the brain that perceive, but only a small share of each, and 
that if you excise a part of the brain, but not all of any particular 
department, the surrounding territory, which theretofore lay dor- 
mant, will now develop the faculty which was formerly exercised by 
the part removed. So it would seem that in all brains there is the 
capacity for universal intelligence, but there is lacking some power 
which forces it into action. The intellect lies like a mass of coals, 
heated, alive, but dormant; it needs the blow-pipe of genius to oxy- 
genate and bring it to white heat ; and it rarely happens, in the 
history of mankind, that the whole brain is equally active, and the 
whole broad temple of the soul lighted up in every part. The world 
is full of men whose minds glow in spots. The hereditary blood- 
force, or power of nutrition, or purpose of God, or whatever it may 
be, is directed to a section of the intelligence, and it blazes forth in 
music, or poetry, or painting, or philosophy, or action, or oratory. 
And the world, as it cannot always behold the full orb of the sun, 
is delighted to look upon these stars, points of intense brilliancy, 
glorious with a fraction of the universal fire.— T/^e Great Cryptogram. 
The Graves of the Dead Soldiers. In this sweet spring- 
time, this revival of nature, this resurrection of the year, this 
emblem of God's perennial goodness and the immortality of his 
works; even now, when into the cold and silent corpse of winter he 
breathes life and warmth and motion, dissolving the snow-wreaths 
into blossoms, and the white shroud into a garment of glorious ver- 
dure, even now let us meet and cast the choicest children of the 
spring upon the graves of those to whom we owe so much.— 
Memorial Address, 1884. 



76 BONNELLIANA, 

GOVERNMENT LOANS TO THE PEOPLE. 

" But, as you had abolished interest on money, there could be no 
mortgages, and the poor men would starve to death before they 
could raise a crop. " 

" Then,'' I replied, '^ I should invoke the power of the nation, as 
was done in that great civil war of 1861, and issue paper money, 
receivable for all taxes and secured by the guarantee of the faith 
and power of five hundred miUion people; and make advances to 
carry these ruined peasants beyond the first years of distress — that 
money to be a loan to them, without interest, and to be repaid as a 
tax on their land. Government is only a machine to insure justice 
and help the people, and we have not yet developed half its powers. 
And we are under no more necessity to limit ourselves to the 
governmental precedents of our ancestors than we are to confine 
ourselves to the narrow boundaries of their knowledge, or their 
inventive skill, or their theological beliefs. The trouble is that so 
many seem to regard government as a divine something which has 
fallen down upon us out of heaven, and, therefore, not to be 
improved upon or even criticised; while the truth is, it is simply a 
human device to secure human happiness, and, in itself, has no more 
sacredness than a wheelbarrow or a cooking-pot. The end of 
everything earthly is the good of man; and there is nothing sacred 
on earth but man, because he alone shares the Divine conscience. " — 
Ccesafs Column. 

Peovidence. Surely, then, we can afibrd to leave God's planets 
in God's hands. Not a particle of dust is whirled in the funnel of 
the cyclone but God identifies it, and has marked its path. — 
Bagnarok. 

Party Slavery. Party slavery is one of the most threatening 
of the dangers which now surround free institutions. What we 
want is an outcrop of individual judgment. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The World Looked at erom Below. The world is a 
wretched-looking object viewed from below, but grand and gaudy 
as stage scenery to him who can contemplate it from above. The 
highest test of a true gentleman is gentleness to servants and 
courtesy to the unfortunate. The man who can address a beggar 
with the same tones of voice which he will use toward a prince is 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 77 

one of nature's noblemen — yea, a species of demi-god, and fit to be 
worshiped by common humanity. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Famous Brand. But he says I am " an oflBce-betj^gar ! " 
'^ An office-beggar! " And that from a gentleman bearing the name 
[Washburn] which he does! Et tu, Brute! " An office-beggar! " 
Why, Mr. Speaker, when T entered the State of Minnesota it was 
Democratic. Wlien I entered the county in which I reside it was 
two to one Democratic. 1 asked no office ; I expected none. But, 
Mr. Speaker, the charge comes from such a quarter I cannot fail to 
notice it. Why, sir, the gentleman's family are chronic '^ office-beg- 
gars." They are nothing if not in office. Out of office they are 
miserable, wretched, God-forsaken — as uncomfortable as that 
famous stump- tailed bull in fly time. [Laughter.] This whole 
trouble arises from the persistent determination of one of the gen- 
tleman's family to sit in this body. Why, Mr. Speaker, every young 
male of the gentleman's family is born into this world with '^ M. C." 
franked across his broadest part. [Great laughter and applause.] — 
Speech in Congress j 1868. 

Resolutio:n'. I should be a very weak creature if I could be 
turned back from asserting what I believe to be true, through fear 
of the laughter of a whole generation of fools. — Journal, 1891. 

Modern Civilization. To-morrow we will go out together, 
and I shall show you the fruits of our modern civilization. 1 shall 
take you, not upon the upper deck of society, where the flags are 
flying, the breeze blowing, and the music playing, but down into 
the dark and stufiy depths of the hold of the great vessel, where the 
sweating gnomes, in the glare of the furnace heat, furnish the 
power which drives the mighty ship resplendent through the seas of 
time. We will visit the Under -World. — Ccesar^s Column. 

ATLANTIS THE LAND OF NOAH. 

Let us briefly consider this record. 

It shows, taken in connection with the opening chapters of 
Genesis : 

1. That the land destroyed by water was the country in which 
the civilization of the human race originated. Adam was at first 
naked (Gen., chap, iii., 7) ; then he clothed himself in leaves; then 
in the skins of animals (chap, iii., 21); he was the first that tilled 



78 BONNELLIANA. 

the earth, having emerged from a more primitive condition in which 
he lived upon the fruits of the forest (chap, ii., 16); his son Abel 
was the first of those that kept .flocks of sheep (chap, iv., 2) ; his son 
Cain was the builder of the first city (chap, iv., 17) ; his descendant, 
Tubal-cain, was the first metallurgist (chap, iv., 22) ; Jabal was the 
first that erected tents and kept cattle (chap, iv., 20) ; Jubal was 
the first that made musical iDStruments. We have here the succes- 
sive steps by which a savage race advances to civilization. We will 
see hereafter that the Atlanteans passed through precisely similar 
stages of development. 

2. The Bible agrees with Plato in the statement that these An- 
tediluvians had reached great populousness and wickedness, and 
that it was on account of their wickedness God resolved to destroy 
them. 

3. In both cases the inhabitants of the doomed land were de- 
stroyed in a great catastrophe by the agency of water : they were 
drowned. 

4. The Bible tells us that in an earlier age, before their destruc- 
tion, mankind had dwelt in a happy, peaceful, sinless condition in a 
Garden of Eden. Plato tells us the same thing of the earlier ages 
of the Atlanteans. 

5. In both the Bible history and Plato's story the destruction 
of the people was largely caused by the intermarriage of the superior 
or divine race, "the sons of God," with an inferior stock, "the 
children of men," whereby they were degraded and rendered 
wicked. . . . 

It is now conceded by scholars that the genealogical table given 
in the Bible (Gen., chap, x.) is not intended to include the true negro 
races, or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Finns or Lapps, the Aus- 
tralians, or the American red men. It refers altogether to the Medi- 
terranean races, the Aryans, the Cushites, the Phoenicians, the 
Hebrews and the Egyptians. " The sons of Ham " were not true 
negroes, but the dark-brown races. (See WinchelPs Preadamites, 
shap. vii.) 

If these races (the Chinese, Australians, Americans, etc.) are not 
descended from Noah, they could not have been included in the 
Deluge. If neither China, Japan, America, Africa, Northern Europe 
nor Australia were depopulated by the Deluge, the Deluge could not 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 79 

have been universal. But as it is alleged that it did destroy a 
country, and drowned all the people thereof except Noah and his 
family, the country so destroyed could not have been Europe, Asia, 
Africa, America, or Australia, for there has been no universal de- 
struction of the people of those regions ; or, if there had been, how 
can we account for the existence to-day of people, on all of those 
continents, whose descent Genesis does not trace back to Noah, and, 
in fact, about whom the writer of Genesis seems to have known 
nothing ? 

We are thus driven to one of two alternative conclusions: either 
the Deluge record of the Bible is altogether fabulous, or it relates to 
some land other than Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, some land 
that «t'as destroyed by water. It is not fabulous; and the land it 
refers to is not Europe, Asia, Africa or Austraha — but Atlantis. 
No other land is known to history or tradition that was overthrown 
in a great catastrophe by the agency of water ; that was civilized, 
populous, powerful, and given over to wickedness.— Atlantis. 

Hope. And joy sat in my heart; and Hope stood, with a fair face 
and bright torch, the eternal angel of human life, pointing forward 
to sweet and flowery paths of peace and love ; and my poor bruised 
and battered soul, scarred with wounds and trampled under the feet 
of Fate, glowed and expanded and shone like a great star — a world 
of happiness.— Doctor Huguet. 

Love. A piece of cheese browned for the rat-trap. An egregious 
trick of nature, to make fools breed more fools.— Essai/, 1851. 

The Caee of the Mind. As the train moved on I indulged in 
many sad and some amusing reflections. Life is a wonderful pano- 
rama, and far surpasses in interest, to the appreciative spirit, any- 
thing that can be shown on the mimic stage. As we grow 
older, the brain, when not poisoned by the use of intrusive and 
destructive stimulants and narcotics, acquires all the sensitive- 
ness of a photographic plate, and receives impressions of char- 
acter of marvelous distinctness and variety of color. Youth 
is the period of ferment, heat and passion, and the intellectual 
apparatus does not reach its perfect work until middle life. The 
receptivity and fecundity of the brain are then at their best. There 
is no higher material study than the perfection of the conditions of 
tl^.e mind. It is such a subtle jiotency that it is a grave crime to 



Sd BONNELLIANA. 

injuriously affect it by putting into the mouth anything that will 
lessen its harmonious and exquisite action. The mind responds, like 
a delicately constructed instrument, to every influence acting upon 
the body; and the body must be neither underfed nor clogged with 
indulgence, if we would have the god-like harp respond to the finest 
touches of the angels of the soul. — Doctor Hiigiiet. 

The Survival of the Fightest. We should supplement Dar- 
win's " Survival of the Fittest " with the survival of thefightest. It 
is pluck that tells. The man that is eaten is the moral and mental 
superior of the tiger that eats him — but the tiger survives. The 
great races are the conquering races. Who ever depicted the 
virtues and the glories of the subjugated ! The first thought that 
should be impressed on a child is to stand up for his rights. No 
nation would dare to trespass on a race so trained. — Journal, 1886. 

Saint Judas. Oh, Judas, Judas! Why did you hang yourself"? 
Why did you not boldly charge the betrayal on Peter "l You would 
have divided public opinion, and been to-day St. Judas to half the 
Christian world. Nothing is so bad as a confession. — Tlie Anti- 
Monopolist. 

A TERRIBLE THOUaHT. 

What conclusion is forced upon us "l 

That, written in the rocky pages of the great volume of the planet, 
are the records of repeated visitations from the comets which then 
rushed through the heavens. 

No trace is left of their destructive powers, save the huge, unstrat- 
ified, unfossiliferous deposits of clay and stones and bowlders, locked 
away between great layers of the sedimentary rocks. 

Can it be that there wanders through immeasurable space, upon 
an orbit of such size that millions of years are required to couiplete 
it, some monstrous luminary, so vast that when it returns to us it 
fills a large part of the orbit which the earth describes around the 
sun, and showers down upon us deluges of debris, while it fills the 
world with flame ? And are these recurring strata of stones and 
clay and bowlders, written upon these widely- separated pages of 
the^ geologic volume, the record of its oft and regularly recurring 
YV tations ? — Bagnaroh 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 81 

THE IKISH AND SLAVERY. 

No men should love liberty more than the Irish, since none have 
suffered more from oppression. For centuries their religion was 
proscribed, their literature trampled under foot, their language 
almost exterminated, their soil confiscated, and millions of their 
best and bravest driven into exile. Let these things be remembered, 
not in bitterness and wrath^ for many of them were the natural out- 
come of a rude, barbarous age; but let them be to Irishmen everywhere 
an incentive to love liberty and sympathize with the oppressed. 
For the sake of O'Counell, let the Irishman treat with kindness 
everywhere the poor black men of America. Theirs is indeed a 
hard lot to bear. When the Irishman shakes the dust of Ireland 
from his feet, he steps at once into a land of equal opportunity. For 
him and his children every path of preferment, every avenue of 
social distinction, stands open. But the black man carries in the 
color of his skin a perpetual appeal to prejudice. Let not the 
countrymen of O'Connell add a single pang to his sufferings, or a 
single obstruction to his progress. Over the grave of the great Lib- 
erator let all bigotries be buried. As no race in the world believes 
more profoundly than the Irish that Christ died for all men, black 
and white, let no race excel them in generosity, liberality and tol- 
eration. 

It was in Ireland that slavery was first abolished. Far back in 
the past, in the twelfth century, when England's serfs yet wore their 
iron collars, when the peasant of Gaul was esteemed of less value 
and had fewer rights than a red deer, the synod of Armagh pro- 
claimed the freedom of every slave in Ireland, and since then 
slavery has never polluted the soil of the green island with its pres- 
ence. — Speech on O^Connell, 1875. 

Morning. 
Lonely the towering light goes up the hills, 
Up 'mid the silent mountains ; while afar 
The sheeted glow the opening orient fills, 
O'erflooding star by star. — 1851. 

Bacon's Double Character. These descriptions fit Bacon's 
case precisely. His ambition drags him into the midst of the activ- 
ities of the court; his natural predisposition carries him away to St. 
Albans or Twickenham Park, to indulge in his secret " contempla- 



82 BONNELLIANA. 

tions/' and to compose the "works of his recreation" and "the 
works of the alphabet. " He was, as it w^ere, two men bound in 
one. He aspired to rule England and to give a new philosophy to 
mankind. He would rival Cecil and Aristotle at the same time.— 
The Great Cryptogram, 

Nature. "Nature," he continued, "is as merciless as she is 
prolific. Let us consider the humblest little creature that lives — 
we will say the field-mouse. Think what an exquisite compendium 
it is of bones, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries — all sheathed in such 
a dehcate, flexible and glossy covering of skin. Observe the innum- 
erable and beautiful adjustments in the little animal; the bright, 
pumping, bounding blood ; the brilliant eyes, with their marvelous 
powers." — CcBsafs Column. 

THE CIVIL WAR. 
Only God can weigh the hearts of men; He alone can add up the 
great account of praise and blame, and cast the true balance. And 
doubtless the lessons of history as recorded in His books would shock 
and stun mankind if revealed to them ; even as it may be true that 
oftentimes, as Eliza Sproat Turner says, 

" Satan laughs to greet the trooping souls' 
Of those who had denied him on the earth, 
And thought themselves secure of seats in heaven. " 

The great civil war was a contest between rival modes of educa- 
tion, rival traditions, rival systems of law and labor, rival beliefs, 
intensified by climatic differences. It was a battle between the 
forty-second degree of north latitude and the thirty-second; between 
the lands of snow and the lands of sun. The roots of the conflict 
reached back to the time when the savage first made a slave of his 
prisoner, giving him his hfe in exchange for his service. Liberty 
and slavery were the twins of one mother, antiquity; and they grew 
side by side until a continent was not great enough to hold them, 
and one or the other had to perish. And who grieves for slavery 
to-day ■? No living soul in all the world. The nation has shaken it 
off; it has girded up its loins ; it goes forward to new conquests and 
new glories. —Memorial Address, 1884. 

Let Each Man Do His Duty. It is the duty of every one to 
do his utmost in the sphere of action assigned to him. The bricks 
in the foundation -wall are necessary to the glorious statue which 



EXTltACTS AND SELECTIONS. 83 

they uphold. They are not the statue, but the statue caunot stand 
without them. If Wilham Burness, the poor gardener of Ayr, had 
not done his whole duty, in the midst of grinding poverty and 
wretchedness, we should have lost the sweetest lyrics in the lan- 
guage, written by his immortal son. It is the black mud that feeds 
the lily. It is from the refuse that the sweetest odors, freighting 
the zephyrs, are distilled.— Doctor Huguet. 

A Distinction. Success makes more men great than greatness 
makes successful. — 1857. 

Proofs of God, The tropical bird needs feathers no more than 
the elephant and the Chinese dog need hair. Why is it not a naked, 
ghastly, bat-like thing? Whose sense of beauty required it to be 
covered with this gorgeous but hot plumage ? There must be a 
cultured intelhgence that contemplates these things even in the 
manless wMerness.— Journal, 1883. 

Song of the Summer Wind. 
OflF to the mountains at thought with the sun. 
Whisper them kindly and kiss them — and on ! 
On, where the silence is haughty and high, 
With a smile to the sea and a glance to the sky. 
Wheel thee, and turn thee, and twine thee in play ; 
From the earth with thy wings flap the silence away; 
Plague the dull shade in the leaf- sheltered bowers, 
And splash the red sunshine adown on the flowers. 
Summer-gale,— Summer-gale, — soft as the sigh 
That heaves when the foot of the lover is nigh ; 
Summer-gale, — Summer-gale, — wild as the tone 
That the sea-eagle shrieks to the silence alone. 
Summer-gale, — Summer-gale,— hght be thy way. 
Over earth, as a leaf on a streamlet astray, 
That trembles in ripple, in shadow is gone, 
Now lit by the streamlet, now lit by the sun. 
Summer-gale, — Summer-gale,— witching and wild, 
With the clasp of a true-love, the laugh of a child; 
Silkenly sweeping,— ah! Beauty unfurled 
Thee to play like a smile on the iace of the world. 

— The Mourners Vision, 1850. 



84 VONNELLIAKA, 

The True Oedee of Peogeess. Progress must commence with 
education; thence it proceeds to the ballot-box; thence to the 
statute-book ; and thence it flowers forth in abundance, content- 
ment, fair-play and virtue. The political reformer who seeks to im- 
prove the legislation of a people strikes at the roots of vice, while 
the parson simply prunes the limbs of that vine whose sap flows 
from the fat, rich soil of misgovernment.— T/^ Anti- Monopolist. 

Undeefeeding. For the vices of man are like his diseases. 
While it is true that there are a few physical diseases which can be 
traced to high-living, the great multitude of them spring from de- 
bihty consequent upon under-feeding. So with moral diseases. 
Dirt and want generate sins as naturally as they breed vermin.— r/*e 
Anti- Monopolist. 

The Civilizability of the Negeo. There are three things 
which testify to the inherent civilizabihty of the negro race : First, 
their desire for learning; second, their strong rehgious instincts; 
and third, their desire to be respectable and to imitate the best ex- 
amples given them by the whites. It does not seem to me that the 
red men manifest any of these traits ; hence I argue that the negro 
wdll rise upon the breast of civilization, while the Indian is very apt 
to disappear before \t.— Doctor Huguet. 

MOENING. 

There on the mountain's crest the morning stands, 
Her rosy palms turned peace-wise to the west; 
The timid morn, mirth-lipped and beautiful. 
Mark how the night, like an uncoiliug snake, 
Steals slow and silent off.— T/^e Mournefs Vision, 1850. 
The Phoenicians. The extent of country covered by the com- 
merce of the Phoenicians represents, to some degree, the area of the 
old Atlantean Empire. Their colonies and trading-posts extended 
east and west from the shores of the Black Sea, through the Medi- 
terranean to the west coast of Africa and of Spain, and around to 
Ireland and England; while from north to south they ran ged from 
the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. They touched every point where civil- 
ization in later ages made its appearance. Strabo estimated that they 
had three hundred cities along the west coast of Africa. When Col- 
umbus sailed to discover a new world, or re- discover an old one, he 



J^JXTl^ACTS AM) SELECTtOXS. 80 

took his departure froni a Phoenician seaport, founded by that great 
race two tliousand five hundred years previously. This Atlantean 
sailor, with his Phcruician features, sailing from an Atlantean port, 
simply re-opened the path of commerce and colonization which had 
been closed when Plato's island sank in the sea. And it is a curi- 
ous fact that Columbus had the antediluvian world in his mind's 
eye even then, for when he reached the mouth of the Orinoco he 
thought it was the river Gihon that flowed out of Paradise, and he 
wrote home to Spain, '^ There are here great indications suggesting 
the proximity of the earthly Paradise, for not only does it correspond 
in mathematical position with the opinions of the holy and learned 
theologians, but all other signs concur to make it probable." — 
Atlantis. 

MiLLiONAiKES. The most utterly useless, destructive and 
damnable crop a country can grow is — millionaires. If a commu- 
nity were to send to India and import a lot of man-eating tigers, 
and turn them loose on the streets, to prey on men, women and 
children, they would not inflict a tithe of the misery that is caused 
by a like number of millionaires. And there would be this further 
disadvantage : the inhabitants of the city could turn out and kill the 
tigers, but the human destroyers are protected by the benevolent 
laws of the very people they are immolating on the altars of wretch- 
edness and vice. — Ccesafs Column. 

The Lark. 
There rings the waked lark's song. 
Wavering in echoes, as a quivering sword 
Shakes off the long bright flashes. — 1850. 

ELIHU WASHBUENE ARRAIGNED. 
One word in conclusion. The gentleman has assailed me, and it 
is but right that I should put his own character in the balance. 
What great measure, in his sixteen years of legislation, has the 
gentleman ever originated? What liberal measure has ever met 
with his support ? What original sentiment has he ever uttered? 
What thought of his has ever risen above the dead level of the 
dreariest platitudes ? If he lay dead to-morrow in this chamber, 
what heart in this body would experience one sincere pang of sor- 
row? 



86 DONNELLlANA. 

Who is there in this House he has not assailed ? 
He told the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Woodbridge], the 
other day, that every corrupt and profligate measure that was pressed 
In this body met his support; and when the gentleman from Ver- 
mont rose upon him he cringed out of it like a whipped spaniel! 
Did he not say to my friend from Philadelphia [Mr. O'Neill] the 
other day, that he would not say — for that is the gentleman's way 
of making an insinuation — that he would not say that the gentle- 
man was one of a ring to swindle this country ? Has he not attacked 
my friend from Iowa [Mr. Price] and aspersed his motives in his 
legislation in this body "? He has sought to build himself up upon our 
dishonor, to glorify himself in our disgrace, to pollute and befoul 
and traduce the very body of which he is a member. Why, sir^ his 
harangues are the staple of the newspapers of the Opposition. We 
meet his charges on the stump. By his wholesale reckless assaults 
upon the honor and integrity of members he has lowered the stand- 
ard of this body. He has furnished argument for the wit of Dan 
Kice. He has furnished substance for the slanderers of the pot- 
house. 

Mr. Speaker, I need enter into no defense of the Fortieth Con- 
gress. In point of intellect, of devotion to the public welfare, of 
integrity, of personal character, it will compare favorably with any 
Congress that ever sat since the foundation of our Government. It 
Is illustrated by names that would do honor to any nation in any age 
of the world. — Speech in Congress. 

Heecules. In fact civihzation itself is, in one sense, simply the 
power of human intelligence to overcome the antagonistic forces of 
nature. Hence the myth of Hercules overcoming dragons and hons, 
and navigating oceans, is simply the dim remembrance of the aggre- 
gate triumphs of an ancient race, typified as a man, just as we call the 
United States <' Uncle Sam -, " and afterwards deified as a God, just 
as the Eomans worshiped the dead Caesars.— The Anti-Monopolist. 
Temper. It is well to keep your wrath behind your thought, — 
not in front of it; let it infuse itself into what you to say, — not fill 
your mouth to spluttering. — Journal, 1886. 

The Ig:n^orant Always Slaves. Then I told them that 
without education they could not be a free people ; for freedom and 
ignorance were an incongruous pair, who bred two twin monsters, 



EKTBACTS AND HELECTtON^. 87 

anarchy aud despotism, and one of these was sure to devoiif the other. 
An ignorant people were only fit to be slaves, and sooner or later 
they were sure to become slaves — slaves to superstition, slaves to the 
crafty, slaves to the powerful. They were the prey of every man 
who knew more than they did. They must either learn to think or 
remain beasts of burdeu through all generations. And they could 
not think wisely without knowledge; and they could not acquire 
knowledge unless through the alphabet; by this means the treasures 
of the learning of all time were open for their use. Those queer, 
crooked little marks lay at the base of civilization. They were the 
keys of gold that would unlock the store -houses of the world's 
accumulated wealth. — Doctor Huguet. 

True Greatness. And remember, we have gotten into a way 
of thinking as if numbers and wealth were everything. It is better 
for a nation to contain thirty million people, prosperous, happy and 
patriotic, than one hundred millions, ignorant, wretched and longing 
for ail oi^portunity to overthrow all government. — CcBsar^s Column. 

The " Amplitude " of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The 
new^spapers say I was "sat down upon," as the phrase goes, in 
this convention. That is true. I tried to get in a good word for 
the producing classes, and the representatives of St. Paul and 
Minneapolis (united in nothing else) combined to " sit down " upon 
me. In an intellectual contest I should not fear any of them; but 
when it cames to the " sitting down " process I grant you they have 
an amplitude that covers everything. [Great laughter and applause.] 
— Speech in the Northzvestern Waterways Convention, 1885. 

OUR SOLDIERS. 

The great poet tells us that there are : 

"Tongues iu the trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing," 

and the graves of our dead soldiers preach to us many lessons. 

The first is gratitude. 

We look abroad to-day in this noble and beautiful land: no 
hostile flag blots our sunshine ; no boom of an enemy's cannon dis- 
turbs the placid scene ; no marching troops are hurrying forward to 
battle and to death. From the Atlantic's waters to the Pacific coast, 
from the lakes to the gulf, we are one united, contented and happy 



88 DONNELLIANA. 

people; our flag honored, feared, respected aud beloved iu all lands; 
the pride of our own jDeople, the harbinger of hope for the world. 

All this we owe to the men, hving and dead, who, in the hour of 
terror and agony, were ready to give their Uves that we to-day 
might enjoy the countless blessings of nationality, liberty and peace. 
Their bodies were the sea-wall which then encircled us, when the 
flood of insurrection rose lip-high, turbid and. dark, ragged with 
wrecks, and lashed, torn and frenzied by the tempests of gigantic 
passions. — Memorial Address, 1884. 

"Othello." Turn to OtJwllo. What is the text here? The 
evils of jealousy and the power for wrong of one altogether iniquitous; 
the overthrow of a noble nature by falsehood ; the destruction of a 
pure and gentle woman to satisfy the motiveless hate of a villain. 
And there is a lesser moral. The play is a grand plea for temperance, 
with jewels of thought set in arabesques of speech. — The Great 
Cryptogram. 

Advice to the Irish ik America. But while we rejoice that 
God has cast our lives in these pleasant places, let us remember that 
injustice and despotism lie in waiting in the texture of human 
government, as disease lies lurking in the physical system, ever 
ready to break forth and turn this fair and charming prospect, this 
garden of God, into a pest-house of oppression, such as that from 
which you fled. Watch, then, afar off, the first coming of danger, 
although the cloud be no bigger than a man's hand. Infuse into 
tlie minds of your children the traditions of the republic, and the 
teachings of O'Connell. Do this, and centuries from now, when the 
muse of history comes to write the mighty record of America, she 
will record that the blood of Grattan and Flood, of Curran and 
O'Connell, of Charles Carroll and Andrew Jackson, everywhere, on 
tlie battle-field, in the council chamber, in public and in private life, 
proved itself true to the great cause of human justice, and honored 
itself by advancing the welfare and the greatness of mankind. — 
Speech on O^Connell, 1875. 

Sinbad's Old Mait of the MouiirTAiN. In his speech at Glen- 
coe, Minnesota, on August 19th, 1884, Mr. Donnelly thus good- 
naturedly referred to his competitor, Major Strai*: 

" One 1.5 reminded of the old man whom Sinbad the sailor, in the 



l^XTHACTS AND SElECTtOl^S. SO 

Arabian tale, met ou the desert island on wbicli he was ship- 
wrecked. He asked Sinbad to carry him across a brook; the oblig- 
iug Arabian took him on his shoulders ; he wound his legs around 
Sinbad's neck and utterly refused, ever after, to leave his perch, 
forcing the poor fellow, by whippings and kickings, to carry him 
whither he would, and feed him on the best fruits of his industry. 
The story goes that Sinbad got clear of him at last by brewing some 
wine of wild grapes, making him drunk, and then mashing his head 
with a rock. 

" Little did the Republicans of the Third Congressional District 
think, in 1872, when they first shouldered the Major to carry him 
across one nomination, that his legs would be dangling around their 
necks in 1884. The boys and girls who were children at school then 
are fathers and mothers now, but the Major is still on deck ; and if 
he can have his way, he will ride the necks of their great grand- 
children — grizzled and gaunt, it may be, but as hungry as ever — 
kicking his heels in their reluctant ribs, and whooped on by a troop 
of office-holders, the grandsons, probably, of the present incum- 
bents. 

" The afflicted people can not even have recourse to Sinbad's ex- 
pedient, for the Major is too well seasoned for anything of that kind. " 

State Rights. The nearer we can bring the government to the 
people the better for liberty. In our fierce devotion to the idea of 
nationality, assailed by domestic insurrection, we were ready t^ for- 
get the rights of the States ; but we begin to perceive that the ene- 
mies of mankind may take possession of the central government, 
and that the States may become the last intrenchments of human 
rights. — Speech in Senate of Minnesota, 1891. 

A Creature Seventy Inches Long. Consider, Job, the little- 
ness of man, the greatness of the universe; and what right have you 
to ask Him who made all this the reasons for His actions ? And 
this is a sufficient answer: A creature seventy inches long prying 
into the purposes of an Awful Something, whose power ranges so 
far that blazing suns are seen only as mist-specks ! — Ragnarok. 

Man. Man : a something dependent upon everything. Holding 
position, intelligence, life, happiness upon the uncertain tenure of a 
tliousand contingencies. An idiot, dragged through the streets by a 
swarming rabble of passions, necessities and circumstances^ haling 



00 DONNELLIANA. 

him hither and thither, while, with hair on eud and Lis coat torn, ii6 
makes a stump-speech about '' free-will." — Essay, 1853. 

THE SERMON IN "MACBETH.'' 

All this is revealed in Macbeth. We see the sped of ambition tak- 
ing root ; we see it " disclose itself; '' we see self-love and the sense 
of right warring with each other. We see his fiendish wife driving 
him forward to crime, against the promptings of his better nature. 
It depicts with unexampled dramatic power a cruel and treacher- 
ous murder. Then it shows us how crime begets the necessity for 
crime. 

■' To be thus is nothing, 
But to be safely thus. " 

It shows one horror treading fast upon another's heels; the 
usurper troubled with the horrible dreams " that shake him nightly; " 
the mind of the ambitious woman giving way under the strain her 
terrible will had put upon it, until we see her at last seeking 
peace in suicide; while Macbeth falls overthrown and slaughtered. 

Have all the pulpits of all the preachers given out a more terrible 
exposition and arraignment of evil ambition ? Think of the uncount- 
able millions who, in the past three hundred years, have witnessed 
this play ! Think of the illimitable numbers who will behold it dur- 
ing the next thousand years ! 

What an awful picture of the workings of a guilty conscience is 
that exhibited when Macbeth sees, at the festal board, the blood- 
boltered Banquo rising up and regarding him with glaring and soul- 
less eyes. 

Call the roll of all your pulpit orators ! Where is there one that 
has ever x^reached such a sermon as that ? Where is there one that 
ever had such an audience — such an unending succession of million- 
large audiences — as this man who " in a despised weed sought the 
good of all men "? 

And remember that it was not the virtuous alone, the church- 
goers, the elect, who came to hear this marvelous sermon, but the 
high, the low, the educated, the ignorant, the young, the old, the 
good, the vicious, the titled lord, the poor prentice, the high-born 
dame, the wretched waste and wreck of womankind. — The Great 
Cryptogram. 



l^XTliACTS AND SELECTUmS. 1)1 

The West and South. In this great contest the brains and 
muscles of the South and West must unite, for self-defense, against 
the profound cunning and the insolent aggression of the Northeast- 
ern part of the Union. — Speech, 1874. 

A Good Woman. When she prays the angels gather around her 
lips like humming-birds around honeysuckles. — Journal, 1880. 

The Power of Corporations. Look at it now. These corpo- 
rations, with unlimited credit abroad and complete control of all 
business at home, are able to bribe the newspapers, corrupt the leg- 
islature and even control the courts. They can crush out their ene- 
mies and build up their friends. The highest powers of the human 
mind become their servitors; genius, talent, eloquence, cunning, are 
their tools. The bewildered people will eventually be driven to re- 
sist them by force, even as the starved artisans and peasants of 
France rose up against the devilish arts of that aristocracy which 
iiad combined all Europe against their liberties. The ignorant 
Frenchman found that the guillotine was the only match for the ^. - 
perb cunning of his enemies. Every man must deplore such a re- 
sult; yet it seems to be advancing with the certainty of doom. — 
The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 

LOGICAL DEDUCTIONS AS TO THE DRIFT. 

But there is still another reason which ought to satisfy us, once for 
all, that the drift-deposits were not due to the pressure of a great 
continental ice-sheet. It is this : 

If the presence of the Drift proves that the country in which it 
is found was once covered with a body of ice thick and heavy enough, 
b}' its pressure and weight, to grind up the surface-rocks into clay, 
sand, gravel and bowlders, then the tropical regions of the world 
must have been covered with such a great ice-sheet upon the very 
equator; for Agassiz found in Brazil a vast sheet of " ferruginous 
clay with- pebbles," which covers the whole country, " a sheet of 
drift," says Agassiz, " consisting of the same homogeneous, unstrat- 
ifled paste, and containing loose materials of all sorts and sizes,'' 
deep red in color, and distributed, as in the north, in uneven hills, 
while sometimes it is reduced to a thin deposit. It is recent in time, 
although overlying rocks ancient geologically. Agassiz had no doubt 
whatever that it was of glacial origin. 



&!2 DonnELLLinA . 

Professor Hartt, who accompanied Professor Agassiz in his Soulli 
American travels, and published a valuable work called The Geol- 
ogy of Brazil, describes drift-deposits as covering the province 
of Para, Brazil, upon the equator itself. . . . 

If there are no drift-deposits except where the great ice-sheet 
ground them out of the rocks, then a shroud of death once wrapped 
the entire globe, and all life ceased. 

But we know that all life — vegetable, animal and human — is de- 
rived from pre-glacial sources; therefore, animal, vegetable and hu- 
man hfe did not perish in the Drift age; therefore an ice-sheet did 
not wrap the world in its death-pall ; therefore the drift -deposits of 
the tropics were not due to an ice-sheet; therefore the drift-deposits 
of the rest of the world were not due to ice-sheets ; therefore we 
must look elsewhere for their origin. 

There is no escaping these conclusions. Agassiz himself says, de- 
scribing the Glacial age : 

" All the springs were dried up ; the rivers ceased to flow. To 
the movements of a numerous and animated creation succeeded the 
silence of death/'' 

If the verdure was covered with ice a mile in thickness, all ani- 
mals that lived on vegetation of any kind must have perished ; con- 
sequently, all carnivores which lived on these must have ceased to 
exist ; and man himself, without animal or vegetable food, must 
have disappeared forever. — Bagnarok. 

A GOOD WOED FOR WOMAN. 

"As father Adam first was fooled, 
(A case that's still too common), 
Here lies a man a woman ruled ; 
The devil ruled the woman." 

The same old story. Always the blame thrown on the woman. 
There have been a thousand women ruined by men where one man 
has been ruined by a woman. Woman is man's angel. Whatever is 
good in human nature is best in woman. There is no woman, not 
insane, who is incapable of goodness. Whatever is beastly in wom- 
an is man's work. That great master of human nature, Shakespeare, 
when he painted the worst woman. Lady Macbeth, did not fail to 
show her eventually crazed by the stings of conscience, and dying 
of remorse. Her partner in guilt, Macbeth, fought it out to the last, 
bold and defiant. — The Anti-Monopolist. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 93 

What the People Need. I would simply mislead the people 
by confirming them in their prejudices; and, while they praised me 
now, they would curse me hereafter. The people need prophets, not 
pauders — bold-hearted men, ready to fight the siu'ging torrents of 
popular error, rather than mealy-mouthed, empty-hearted dem- 
agogues, who will float, like rotten drift-wood, along the ill-smelling, 
turbid current of the world's popular delusions.— Doc/or Huguet. 

Servility to Wealth. And then the inexpressible servility 
of those below them ! The fools would not recognize Socrates if 
they fell over him in the street ; but they can perceive Croesus a 
mile ofi"; they can smell him a block away; and they will dislocate 
their vertebrae abasing themselves before him. It reminds one of 
the time of Louis XIV. in France, when millions of people were in 
the extremest misery, — even unto starvation, — while great grandees 
thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the 
king to bed, or take ofi" his dirty socks. And if a common man, by 
any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt 
as if he had looked into heaven and beheld Divinity creating 
worlds. Oh, it is enough to make a man loathe his species.— O^e^ar's 
Column. 

Conscience and the Angels. There are threads that con- 
nect the conscience of the humblest with the great White Throne of 
Heaven, and when any man murders his sense of right all the 
legions of angels are disturbed in their serenity.— Doctor Huguet. 

THE ANTEDILUVIANS. 

Science has but commenced its work of reconstructing the past 
and rehabilitating the ancient peoples, and surely there is no study 
which appeals more strongly to the imagination than that of this 
drowned nation, the true Antediluvians. They were the founders 
of nearly all our arts and sciences ; they were the parents of our 
fundamental beliefs; they were the first civilizers, the first navi- 
gators, the first merchants, the first colonizers of the earth ; their 
civihzation was old when Egypt was young, and they had passed 
away thousands of years before Babylon, Rome and London were 
dreamed of. This lost people were our ancestors ; their blood flows 
in our veins; the words we use every day were heard, in their prim- 



94 DONNELLIANA. 

itive form, in their cities, courts and temples. Every line of race 
and thought, of blood and belief, leads back to them. 

Nor is it impossible that the nations of the earth may yet employ 
their idle navies in bringing to the light of day some of the relics of 
this buried people. Portions of the island lie but a few hundred 
fathoms beneath the sea; and if expeditions have been sent out 
from time to time, in the past, to resurrect from the depths of the 
ocean Eunken treasure-ships, with a few thousand doubloons hiddeu 
in their cabins, why should not an attempt be made to reach the 
buried wonders of Atlantis? A single engraved tablet dredged up 
from Plato's island would be worth more to science, would more 
strike the imagination of mankind than all the gold of Peru, all 
the monuments of Egypt, and all the terra-cotta fragments gathered 
from the great libraries of Chaldea. — Atlantis. 

The Power of Truth. One man, Mahommed said, with God 
on his side, is a majority; and one man, with truth on his side, must 
become a majority. — Bagnarok. 

Ignora:nce. Ignorance in the individual is dreadful, suicidal. 
But when it overspreads a nation in a black, fierce tempest of folly, 
bigotry and passion, it is worse than the doom of destruction fore- 
told in the Apocalypse. — Journal^ 1890. 

PERSEVERAlfCE. 

G-0 slowly on with patient brow : 

The gradual is God's law ; 
And struggling rose the names that now 

Hold rivalry in awe. — 1853. 
The Value of Foreig:n^ Immigration. If our age, Mr. Chair- 
man, possesses any peculiar and distinctive significance, auy distin- 
guishing trait which marks it as a new era in the development of 
the human race, it is to be found in its breaking-down of old prej- 
udices and illiberahties ; In its opening to all men, of all races and 
colors, equal opportunities for advancement ; in its scattering over 
new and virgin lands the pent-up and oppressed populations of the 
elder nations ; and, in a word, in its softening the asperities and 
broadening the generosities of mankind. Permit me to remark, 
Mr. Chairman, that that party which shall aspire to continuously 
rule the destinies of our nation must take this lesson deeply to 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 95 

heart, or it will find itself unworthy its high mission. The focal 
i3oint of the age, " the half-brother of the world," as an English 
poet has called our country, those who would lead us must rise to 
the sublime height of justice to the entire human family; not only 
to that portion, whatever may be their color, born on our own soil, 
but to those vast populations of the Old World, joint heritors with 
ourselves of the billion acres of land still unclaimed and uninhab- 
ited.— 5^?cec/^ in Congress, Feb. 27, 1864. 

How News Travels. There is a sort of freemasonry among 
the negroes, whereby the servants of one house communicate the 
occurrences which happen in it to the servants of all the other 
houses; and thus the news will spread, with almost telegraphic 
rapidity, throughout a whole neighborhood. It is said that the In- 
dians have the same system. We are told, for instance, that the mas- 
sacre of General Custer and his troops was known to the red men, five 
hundred miles from the scene of the disaster, long before the whites 
had heard of it by the electric wires. I suppose that our own race, 
before the days of newspapers, used the same means of disseminat- 
ing information, and any startling news passed from mouth to 
mouth with wonderful rapidity. — Doctor Huguet. 

" Not Proven." The shallower the mind, the more positive it 
Is usually upon every subject. The deepest thinkers adopt the 
Scotch verdict, ^' Not proven," as to many of the great problems 
of life. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

A Smile. That bland, mechanical, New England smile, which 
does not in the slightest degree interfere with the shrewdness, cun- 
ning and observation working away beneath it. A piece of hered- 
itary facial carving, derived from generations of worldly-minded 
ancestors, who found that a smiling expression was a great help in 
business, and cost them nothing — an important consideration to 
an economical race. — Journal, 1886. 

The Age of Trusts. " The undertakers met in St. Paul, 
Sept. 9th, 1890, and formed a trust. Every large town in Minnesota 
and the two Dakotas was represented." 

What are we coming to ? When the morning of the Kesurrection 
dawns and the poor fools are turning over and asking, half-awake, 
'^ Where's Gabriel?" some newspaper reporter will tell them that 



9G BONNELLIANA. 

a Trust has bought bis trumpet, aud tbat there won't be a single 
" toot" without spot cash. — Journal, 1890. 

THE MISSION OF ISRAEL. 

The vital conviction which, during thousands of years, at all times 
pressed home upon the Israelites, was that they were a " chosen 
people, " selected out of the multitudes of the earth, to perpetuate 
the great truth that there was but one God— an illimitable, omni- 
potent, paternal spirit, who rewarded the good and punished the 
wicked— in contradistinction from the multifarious, subordinate, 
animal and bestial demi-gods of the other nations of the earth. 
This subhme monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a 
high civilization, for man's first religion is necessarily a worship of 
'' stocks and stones," and history teaches us that the gods decrease 
in number as man increases in intelligence. It was probably in 
Atlantis that monotheism was first preached. The proverbs of 
"Ptah-hotep," the oldest book of the Egyptians, show that this 
most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the 
mother-land at the very dawn of history ; this book preached the 
doctrine of one God, " the rewarder of the good and the punisher 
of the wicked." " In the early days the Egyptians worshiped one 
ODly God, the maker of all things^ without beginning and without 
end. To the last the priests preserved this doctrine, and taught it 
privately to a. select few." The Jews took up this great truth 
where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the 
ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome and India this 
handful of poor shepherds— ignorant, debased and despised— have 
carried down to our own times a conception which could only have 
oi-iginated in the highest possible state of human society. 

And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the con- 
tinued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, 
bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and 
pressing forward, under the force of a perpetual and irresistible im- 
pulse. The speech that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of 
Chicago and Melbourne resounded two thousand years ago in the 
streets of Rome ; and, at a still earlier period, it could be heard in 
the palaces of Babylon and the shops of Thebes.— in Tyre, in Sidon, 
in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many nations have perished, 
how many languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid civil- 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 97 

izatious have crumbled into ruin, how many temples and towers and 
towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of mono- 
theism first seized this extraordinary people! All their kindred 
nomadic tribes are gone; their land of promise is in the hands of 
strangers; but Judaism, with its offspi-ing, Christianity, is taking 
possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one 
people — one poor, obscure and wretched people — spans the tre- 
mendous gulf between '' Ptah-hotep " and this nineteenth century. 

If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression — of 
whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules — can be supposed 
ever to interfere with the laws of matter and reach down into the 
doings of men, would it not be to save from the wreck and waste 
of time the most sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned 
Atlantis— a belief in the one, only, just God, the father of all life, 
the imposer of all moral obhgationsf — .4^/«^^/5. 

The Hell of the Pkoscribed. This is my punishment. This 
is my Uving death. I sit in the midst of my sorrows as in a tomb. 
I cannot die. I cannot fly into the unknown world out of which 
have come such visions. I know nothing, I can surmise nothing 
of the mucli that must be there. This is what terrifies me — the 
unknown, the immeasurable ! I have no fear of hell. This is hell. 
The proud mind that dwells in a proscribed body lives in hell. 
Coals and flames are nothing to the anguish of a tortured spirit. It 
is the soul that feels the burning, not the dead matter of the body. 
— Doctor Huguet. 

Bob Ingersoll akd Feancis Bacon. I should as soon at- 
tempt to sound the depths of the Atlantic Ocean with a champagne- 
cork, as to measure the intellect of the philosopher of Verulam by 
the mind of this rhapsodist.— ^eec//, 1891. 

Desire. There is no logician so subtle as Desire. It has a 
thousand arguments. It can recall ten thousand facts. It casts its 
glittering and deceptive fight over unprepossessing reality. It warms 
us with a fire before which the cold figure of Judgment is seen to 
dissolve and melt away in silence, like the wax image of the king 
under the spell of the witches. — 1853. 

The Eastern Newspaper Critics. Shallow creatures, who 
measure a man's intellect by his distance from tide- water.— Journal, 
1890. 



98 BONNFLLIANA. 

Bacon ajs^d the Present Age. And why should he acknowl- 
edge them? He left his fame and good name to his " own countrymen 
after some time be past ; " he believed the cipher, which he had so 
laboriously inserted in the Plays, would be found out. He would 
obtain all the glory for his name in that distant future when he would 
not hear the reproaches of caste ; when as a pure spirit he might 
look down from space, and see the winged goodness he had created, 
passing, on pinions of persistent purpose, through all the world, 
through all the ages, from generation to generation. In that age, 
when his body was dust ; when cousins and kin were ashes ; when 
Shakspere had moldered into nothingness beneath the protection of 
his own barbaric curse ; when not a trace could be found of the bones 
of Ehzabeth or James, or even the stones of the Curtain or the Black- 
friars: then, in a new world, a brighter world, a greater world, a 
better world — to which his own age would be but a faint and per- 
turbed remembrance — he would be married anew to his immortal 
works. He would live again, triumphant, over Burleigh and Cecil, 
over Coke and Buckingham, over parasites and courtiers, over trick- 
sters and panders — the magnificent victory of genius overpower, 
of mind over time;— and, so living, he would live forever.— T/?e 
Great Cryptogram. 

Injustice the Mother of Revolutions. Injustice is the 
mother of revolutions. In no case has rebeUion raised its head in 
the midst of equal laws; for what more can a man ask than equality'^ 
But I challenge the historian to point to a single community where 
unjust laws have not sooner or later given birth to revolutions; to 
the efforts of one class to perpetuate and of the other to resist in- 
justice.— /Speec/^ in Congress, February 1, 1866. 

The Automatic Nature of the Mind. "What is the mind 
of man? Who is it that thinks because he intends to think? Who 
is it can anticipate his own thoughts? Where do they come from ? 
The mind is like a great, shoreless pool, and thoughts arise to its 
surface as mermaids project their shining shoulders above the quiet 
sea. But from what unsoundable depths do they arise ? How far 
down toward the central everlasting purposes do those waters 
reach? Do they not rest upon the Will of the universe? And 
are not these apparently self-acting intehects of ours part of the 
great automatic mechanism we call Nature? Is there not a rhythm 



EXTRACTS ANn SELECTIONS. 99 

in the music of the spheres? Are uot all things weighed, measured 
and counted? Can there be an accident in a world that contains 
a God ? And if this be so, are not my sulTerings fore-doomed and 
necessary? Are they not part of the universal scheme? And, if 
this be so, are not ray very miseries dignities? ''—Doctor Huguet. 

Ix ALL Things Gentleness. I do not think it is necessary, 
for the triumph of truth, that it should lacerate the feelings even of 
the humblest. It should come, like Quetzalcoatl, with shining, 
smiling face, its hands full of fruits and flowers, bringing only bless- 
ings and kindliness to the mwliitw^Q.—Bagnarol'. 

The Mountains Tuened into Bread. The time may come 
when the slow processes of agriculture will be largely discarded, 
and the food of man be created out of the chemical elements of 
which it is composed, transfused by electricity and magnetism. We 
have already done something in that direction in the way of syn- 
thetic chemistry. Our mountain ranges may, in after ages, be 
leveled down and turned into bread for the support of the most 
enlightened, cultured, and, in its highest sense, religious people that 
ever dwelt on the globe. All this is possible if civilization is pre- 
served from the destructive power of the ignorant and brutal Plu- 
tocracy, who now threaten the safety of mankind. They are like 
the slave-owners of 1860 : they blindly and imperiously insist on 
their own destruction ; they strike at the very hands that would 
save them. — Ccesafs Column. 

Mental Philosophy. There are men without any capacity 
for original thought, who, like a phonograph, simply repeat what is 
talked into them. — Letter to the Dramatic Mirror. 

AMERICA'S SUPERIORITY. 

Irishmen, you are right to love the beautiful land of your birth; 
that western island, nearest to America, and green with the showers 
borne by tlie gulf-stream from the shores of America. You do right 
to reverence your native land, to cherish its memory, to pity its sor- 
rows, to preserve its distinctive literature, to be prdud of the virtue 
and the genius to which it has given birth. But what is Ireland - 
yes, I may say, what is all Europe —compared with this g,e:it 
theater of human activity of which we aie inheritors; ihis conti- 
nental nation; this free republic? Rejoice and be exceeding- oiad 



100 DONNELLIANA. 

that God has cast your lot in this goodly land. All that O'Connell 
labored; struggled and fought for we have here, completed and per- 
fected. No king sits on his throne to dictate to us; no aristocracy 
grinds us into the earth ; no established church wrings tribute from 
unwilling consciences; no dominant caste flaunts insults in your 
faces. The earth beneath our feet holds in its bosom incalculable 
fertility; the air that blows upon us is free as our own thoughts; 
the government that rules us is ourselves. Here every temple 
points its spire to Glod undisturbed by man; here each religion 
strives with its fellows to establish the greatest claims upon the 
respect and confidence of mankind ; while over all universal educa- 
tion, broad and generous as God's blessed sunlight, brightens and 
warms the nation with its beams. — Speech on Daniel O^Connell, 1875. 

Life. 
Why this great flight, this shadowy flight of time ? 

Passing and hurried flit the phantoms by. 
Have they no aim, no end, no mark sublime, 

In all this labor, but to be and die ? 
Is this their sum and total, and for this 

Do they discard, dishonor or deprave 
All that is given them, and all that is, 

Perverting life and darkening the grave ? — 1851. 
Death and the Hereafter. But that doom was, to one of 
my training, worse than death and the grave. For in death all are 
equal ; and the grave turns us at last into flowers, — bright flowers, 
— things of beauty, that fill the air with perfume. In the dust of 
the grave there are no stirrings of ambition ; no unsatisfied long- 
ings ; no jealousies ; no pride ; no wounded sensibilities ; no great 
passionate bursts of the hearts that are trampled under the feet of 
men ; nothing but peace and sleep. Ay, profound and dreamless 
sleep — sleep that takes no note of night or day, or time or season ; 
of the wind's wild scream or the song-bird's melody ; of the grow- 
ing grass or the falling leaves ; of sunshine or rain ; — sleep that 
merges the individual into the universal nature, as a drop of water 
is lost in the Interminable ocean. And if from this dissolving clod 
the extricated spirit is carried by the great Purpose into other 
realms of being, will not God be there too ? Will not that region 
be part of God's world? wherever it may be ? Can not the soul 



J^JXT1^AC'J\S AND SELECTIONS. 101 

trust itself with safety to Him who made it? Will the Creator. 
Saturu-like, devour His children ? It cannot be. — Doctor Huyuct. 

A New Idea. Whyshould twenty thousand people in a county 
be taxed to pay the expense of allowing a few fools to squabble over 
petty law-suits ? If A has a claim against B, why should C, D, E, 
F and all the rest of the alphabet have to pay A the expense of 
collecting that claim f What have they to do with it ? If A found 
that he had to pay the piper himself he would hesitate about rush- 
ing into law ; he would compromise with B, or he would agree to 
arbitrate his dispute ; and thus the taxpayers of the county would 
save thousands of dollars annually. — r//e Anti-Monopolist. 

Our Old Soldiers. But gratitude does not end with the dead. 
They may not hear or see us. The delighlod spirit, with a universe 
in which to wander, may take small heed of the things of this little 
earth. But we have many of the living soldiers of the w^ar still 
among us ; their courage, their toils, their trials, were little less 
than those of the fallen. They have reached middle life, some of 
them old age ; and some to age have added poverty ; and though none 
of them, I trust, 

" Beg bitter bread through realms their valor won," 

Still there are many who will be glad to feel that the communities in 
which they dwell remember gratefully the part they took in the pre- 
servation of the great republic, and are ready to bold out to them, 
not the cold hand of charity, but the warm grasp of friendship. 
Wbile, then, you adorn the graves of the dead, try to brighten the 
homes of the living. Kindness, gentleness, brotherly love are fairer 
flowers than any that bloom on the fields of earth ] they are divine 
blossoms showered by the hand of God upon the heart of man. — 
Memorial Address, 1884. 

That's Certain^. If we find the devil on one side of a con- 
troversy we know that God must be on the other. — Journal, 1889. 

A PRE-GLACIAL COIN. 

This is indeed an extraordinary revelation. Here we have a 
copper medal, very much like a coin, inscribed with alphabetical or 
hieroglypbical signs, which, when placed under the microscope, in 
the hands of a skeptical investigator, satisfies him that it is not re- 



102 BONNELLtANA. 

cent, aDcl that it imssed through a rolling-mill and was cut hy ci 
macJiine. 

If it is not recent, if the tooth of time is plainly seen on it, it is 
not a modern fraud; if it is not a modern fraud, then it is really the 
coin of some pre-Columbian people. The Indians possessed no cur- 
rency or alphabet, so that it dates back of the red men. Nothing 
similar has been found in the hundreds of American mounds that 
have been opened, so that it dates back of the Mound-builders. 

It comes from a depth of not less than eighth/ feet in glacial clay; 
therefore it is profoundly ancient. 

It is engraved after a method utterly unknotvn to any civilised 
nation on earth, tvithin the range of recorded history. It is en- 

GEAVED WITH ACID ! 

It belongs, therefore, to a civilization unlike any we know of. If 
it had been derived from any other human civilization, the makers, 
at the same time they borrowed the round, metallic form of the 
coin, would have borrowed also the mold or the stamp. But they 
did not; and yet they possessed a rolling-mill and a machine to cut 
out the coin. 

What do we infer? That there is a relationship between our 
civilization and this, but it is a relationship in which this represents 
the parent; and the round metallic coins of historical antiquity 
were derived from it, but without the art of engraving by the use of 
acid. 

It does not stand alone, but at great depths in the same clay im- 
elements of copper and of iron are found. 

What does all this indicate ? 

That far below the present level of the State of Illinois, in the 
depths of the glacial clays, about one hundred or one hundred and 
twenty feet below the present surface of the land, there are found 
the evidences of a high civilization. For a coin with an inscription 
upon it implies a high civilization : —it implies an alphabet, a litera- 
ture, a government, commercial relations, organized society, regu- 
lated agriculture, . which could alone sustain all these; and some 
implement like a plow, without which extensive agriculture is not 
possible ; and this in turn implies domesticated animals to draw the 
plow. The presence of the coin, and of implements of copper and 
iron, proves that mankind had passed far beyond the Stone Age« 



EXTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 103 

And these views arc cculiriiied by the pavemeuts aud c\4l/jrns of 
brick found seventy feet below the surface in the lower Mississippi 
YdiW^y.—Bagnaroli:. 

Man. That bag of fluids and divine and demoniacal influences 
called — m^m.— Journal, 1889. 

The Glory of Wealth. " And thus, under the stimulus of 
shallow vanity," I continued, "a rivalry of barouches and bon- 
nets—an emulation of waste and extravagance — all the powers of 
the minds of men are turned — not to lift up the world, but to de- 
grade it. A crowd of little creatures — men and women— are dis- 
played upon a high platform, in the face of mankind, parading and 
strutting about, with their noses in the air, as tickled as a monkey 
with a string of beads, and covered with a glory which is not their 
own, but wliich they have been able to purchase; crying aloud: 
'Behold what I have got!^ not, 'Behold what I am !^^^—CcBsafs 
Column. 

The Conscience. And something, away within me, sneered at 
me and reviled me — yea, spat at me. And in my heart of hearts 
I stood at the altar of my soul, with downcast head and shamed 
face, sore and sorry, humiliated and wretched. It seemed to me 
that I was an outcast from myself— that my conscience spurned me 
out of its doors into the wilderness.— Doctor Huguet. 

Naturalness. Nothing can be great that is not natural. Great- 
ness is but nature elevated. Man cannot invent anything that will 
accord better with nature than herself. There is no grimace can 
exceed in beauty the ordinary and reposeful face of woman. And if 
one were to assemble all the sounds of nature and mingle them at 
will, from the bellow of the bison to the lamentation of the nightin- 
gale, he could form no scale for the expression of emotion superior 
to the transitions of the human voice.— Essa^j, 1852. 

Man. a creature that thinks — imported into a material world 
incapable of thought. An exotic — a foreigner.— /owma?, 1889. 

What the Farmer Is and Should Be. As Ralph Waldo 
Emerson beautifully puts it in one of his essays: " The glory of the 
farmer is that, in the division of labor, it is his part to create. All 
the trades rest at last on his primitive authority. He stands close 
to nature ; he obtains from earth the bread; and the food which 



104 jDONNELLIANA. 

was not, he causes to be. The first farmer was the first gentleman, 
and all historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land." 

That's the way it should be ; but in this country the owner of 
the land is simply a bondman whose duty it is to support usurers 
and officeholders. He goes clothed in rags, and half- fed on the 
coarsest fare, while those who live off him " wear purple and fine 
linen and fare sumptuously every day.'' The ownership of the 
land in other countries makes a man a gentleman ; here it simply 
enables him to sweat and pay taxes. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

THE VISION. 

As I gazed intently upon this spot, to my extreme astonishment 
I perceived that the light was slowly taking upon itself the outlines 
of a human head and face; vaguely at first, but gradually growing 
more and more plain, until at last the lines of the countenance 
glowed with great distinctness. It was a face painted in light — I 
might almost say in fire. A marvelous face ! A face never to be for- 
gotten. A face I had never seen before. I had often thought how 
much of diverse character and meaning could be implanted on the 
few square inches of the human countenance; but here was a face 
that transcended my highest dream of all such possibilities. 

It was a massive head. The forehead was broad — very broad — 
high and serene. Beneath it glowed wonderful orbs that looked as 
if they had sounded all depths of thought and feeling — even to the 
dreadful verge of despair. There was in them infinite power, sor- 
row, kindliness and compassion ; and yet it was a strong face; the 
mouth mobile, but the chin square. The face was very fair ; the 
hair bright golden, falling in masses to the shoulders, and from it 
radiated luminous beams, pulsating and ever moving. It seemed to 
be the source of the light that illuminated the whole room. 

I had never beheld, anywhere, any picture of this countenance, 
and yet something within me whispered : 

'^ This is The Christ!" — Doctor Huguet. 

Truth Fits into Truth. We sometimes call, in law, an in- 
strument between two parties an indenture. Why? Because it 
was once the custom to write a deed or contract in duplicate, on a 
long sheet of paper or parchment, and then cut them apart upon an 
irregular or indented line. If, thereafter, any dispute arose as to 
whether one was the equivalent of the other, the edges, where they 



P:XTh\iCTS AX J) Sh'LK('TlOXS. 105 

Wert', divided, wore put logtjthcr to see if tlie}' precisely miitclied. If 
they did not, it followed that some fraud had somewhere beeu prac- 
ticed. Truth, in like manner, is serrated, and its indentations fit into 
all other truth. If two alleged truths do not thus dovetail into each 
other, along the line where they approximate, then one of them is 
not the truth, but an error or a fraud. — The Great Cryptogram. 

The Word's Rulers. There was about Prince Cabauo that 
air of confidence and command which usually accompauies great 
wealth or success of any kind. Extraordinary power produces 
always the same type of counteuance. You see it in the high-nosed 
mummied kings of ancient Egypt. There is about them an aristo- 
cratic hauteur which even the shrinking of the dry skin for four 
thousand years has not been able to quite subdue. We feel like 
taking off our hats even to the parched hides. You see it in the 
cross-legged monuments of the old crusaders, in the venerable 
churches of Europe ; a splendid breed of ferocious barbarians they 
were, who struck ten blows for conquest and plunder where they 
struck one for Christ. And you can see the same type of counte- 
nance in the present rulers of the world — the great bankers, the 
railroad presidents, the gigantic speculators, the uncrowned mon- 
archs of commerce, whose golden chariots drive recklessly over the 
prostrate bodies of the people. — Ccesafs Column. 

The Mountains. 
Where the soft vales lie luUed like dimpled smiles ; 

Where rocks stand thick, like high, thought-darkened brows. 
Where wandering rivers linger 'round lone isles, 

Kissing the wet leaves of their trailing boughs. 

But most thy dark woods love I to behold, 

Piled thick on steeps, and massy with close leaves, 
Where 'mid the topmost branches, brownly old, 

The troublous wind continually grieves. — 1851. 
History. Man crawled timidly backward into the history of the 
past over his little limit of six thousand years; and at the farther 
end of his tether he found the perfect civilization of early Egypt. 
He rises to his feet and looks still backward, and the vista of his- 
tory spreads and spreads to antediluvian times. Here at last he 
has reached the beginning of things : here man first domesticated 



106 DONI^ELLIAJ^A. 

the animals; here he first worked in copper and iron; here he pos- 
sessed for the first time an alphabet, a government, comiiierce, 
and coinage. And, lo ! from the bottom of well-holes in Illinois, 
one hundred and fourteen feet deep, the buckets of the artesian- 
well augur bring up copper rings and iron hatchets and engraved 
coins — engraved by a means unknown to historical mankind — and 
we stand face to face with a civilization so old that man will not 
willingly dare to put it into figures. 

Here we are in the presence of that great, but possibly brutal 
and sensual development of man's powers, " the sword-ages, the 
ax-ages, the murder-ages of the Goths," of which G-od cleared the 
earth when he buried the mastodon under the Drift forever. — Bag- 
naroJc. 

Sunset. 

The gold- shod evening through the darkening west 

Slips like a fugitive. — 1851. 
Ireland and the South. Love and loyalty are flowers that 
spring unbidden at the touch of the gentle hand of justice; they 
can never be coerced out of the hearts of men by cruelty and op- 
pression. — Speech at banquet to the Earl of Aberdeen, St. Paul, 1887. 

The Sea. 
And sink at last, when my song is past, 
Like silence on the sea ; 
Beautiful, solemn sea. 
Thou art the world to me, 
The whole wide world to me. 
Never a strand or shore, 

Never the wave of trees. 
But ever the same stern roar, 

The same continuous breeze. 
Ever the same wide waste, 

"With its sullen fall and rise. 
The shadowy billows faced 
With the everlasting skies. — 1851. 

CONSIDER THE WRETCHED. 
Speak to Dives of lifting up the plane of aU the under-fed, under- 
paid, benighted millions of the earth — his fellow-men — to higher 



HXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 107 

levels of comfort, aud joy, and inteliigeDce —not tearing doAvn any, 
but building up all — and Dives can not understand you. 

Ah, Dives ! consider, if there is no other life than this, the fate 
of these uncounted millions of your race ! What does existence give 
to them ? What do they get out of all this abundant and beautiful 
world ? 

To look down the vista of such a life as theirs is like gazing into 
one of the corridors of the Catacombs: an alley filled with reeking 
bones of dead men; while from the cross-arches, waiting for the 
poor man's coming on, ghastly shapes loolc out : — sickness and want 
and sin and grim despair and red-eyed suicide. 

Put yourself in his place. Dives, locked up in such a cavern as 
that, and the key thrown away ! —Ragnarok. 

The Universe is Thought. A something within me seemed 
to cry out : " Fool! fool ! thinkest thou that thy capacity for thought 
is but an orphan accident in the midst of a barren universe ? No, 
no ; tlie universe is thought. Thy mind is but a fragment chipped off 
and dropped to earth from the illimitable soul of things, bearing 
upon it the stamp of its divinity in its sense of right, its imperial 
conscience. Death is but the opening of the door. The room is 
empty, but the tenant has wandered elsewhere. — Doctor Huguet. 

Ked Paint. The finishing touches of the portrait of Reform 
are too often given with red paint. — Journal^ 1889. 

A CHARACTER. 

A countenance that looks as if it had been cut out of lignum- 
vitce, by some humorous demon, with a broad- axe ; an evil face, 
where God hath set the bar-sinister of his unquahfied disapproval. 

A mixture of fool and knave in most exact and judicious propor- 
tions. He would be a fool absolute if his cunning did not restrain 
him ; he would be a scoundrel unmitigated if the cup of his folly 
did not overflow the saucer of his judgment. 

A monstrosity ; an absurdity ; an awful mixture of wickedness 
and weakness. It is as if a Bengal tiger had begotten a foal on the 
body of an unadulterated ass; and the product was an abnormal and 
incongruous combination of claws, hoofs, stripes and ears ; the ap- 
palling roar trailing out into a ridiculous bray; the belly fitted 
neither for blood nor thistles. 



When he goes to hell — as he will — for he naturally belongs 
there — the devils will alternately shrink back and leave a vacuum 
around him, and then gather to roar with laughter over his antics 
and absurdities. — Speech, 1884. 

DINNER BELLS. 

(AFTER POE — A LONG DISTANCE.) 

Hear the glorious dinner bells ; 
Sympathetic dinner bells ; 
Tinkling, tingling, silver bells ; 
What a world of satisfaction 
Their melody foretells ! 

With the pudding from the pot, 
(The dark, ambrosial pot). 
And the turkey smoking hot, 
Filled with filling till it swells ; 
And it smells ! 
Oh, it smells ! 
As if an angel dwells 

In the circumambient air ; 
And, from iridescent wings. 
O'er the group assembled flings 
Paradisial odors rare ; 
Rich and rare ; 
Filling, thrilling all the air ! 
While it smells ! — Oh, it smells ! — 
Smells ! — smells ! — smells ! — 
Smells ! — smells ! — smells ! 
As if the saints forgiven. 
Through the open gates of heaven, 
Flung the beaming, gleaming, streaming 
Breath of Eden rare, 
Rich and rare ; 
Through the circumambient air. 
Everywhere ! — Christmas, 1870. 

The Comet. Do not count too much. Dives, on your lands and 
houses and parchments; your guns and cannon and laws; your in- 
surance companies and your governments. There may be even now 



EXTRACTS AND SEL-ECTIONS. 109 

one comiug from beyond Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or Coma Berenices, 
with glowing countenance and horrid hair, and milHons of tons of 
debris, to overwhelm you and your possessions, and your corpora- 
tions^ and all the ant-like devices of man in one common ruin.— 
Ragnarok. 

A Knave. A dishonest knave who would turn around on 
one-tenth of his own dmmeter.— Journal, 1889. 

The Poor of the Old World. And how pitiful, Mr. Speaker, 
is the condition of those populations 1 They lie at the base of a col- 
umn of injustices heaped high above them. How desolate is the cry 
which their wretchedness, their misery, their very siufulness, sends 
up to heaven ? How pale, how bloodless are their poor faces as they 
gather in the fetid alleys of the great cities of the Old World, or sit 
down patiently to their insufficient food in miserable cabins i The 
whole past of the human family seems to rest crushingly upon 
them. Conquests a thousand years old y^t press upon their should- 
ers. The distinctions of race and caste and rehgion, and all the 
miUion forms of injustice growing out of these, yet hold them under 
their feet. They look to the laws, and they are against them; they 
look to the land, and it is occupied ; they can only hope by the most 
cruel and unceasing toil to snatch a hving more scant, more preca- 
rious than that which the gaunt wolf gathers in the depths of the 
forest. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 

The Mind God-like. But what a sense of exaltation came 
over me ! Out of the very wells and caverns of humihation I had 
climbed to the light. I had risen upon the wings of my own soul. 
I had found that there is that in the mind of man that can survive 
'' the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. '' Only the cowardly 
fall. The brave man dares all the bolts of fate. Death simply 
releases him from unfortunate conditions. The mind is god-like — 
it is God. I would make this black hide as glorious as the crippled 
figure of the slave ^sop, or the satyr-hke features of the persecuted 
Socrates.— Doctor Huguet. 

C^SAK LoMELLiNi. I tumcd to the president. Such a man I 
had never seen before. He was, I should think, not less than six 
feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. His great arms hung 
down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. His 



110 JDONNELLIANA. 

skin was quite dark, almost negroid, and a thick, close mat of curly 
black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. His face was mus- 
cular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, 
especially about the jaws and on the forehead. But the eyes fasci- 
nated me. They were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and 
glaring ; they seemed to shine like those of the cat-tribe, with a 
luminosity of their own. This, then — I said to myself— must be 
Cgesar, the commander of the dreaded Brotherhood.— Ccssar's 
Column. 

National Phogeess. The progress of a people is like the 
progress of a ship at sea. The air is agitated for a thousand miles 
around the vessel; there is a great bluster in the rigging: a great 
rattling of cordage; and out of the whole tumult the sails have 
caught a few caps full of wind, and the ship is advanced a mile or two 
upon its course. Grod has to blow hard down the centuries and over 
the universe to move a nation forward a foot's space.— i(S55. 

THE ABSURDITY OF THE ICE THEORY. 

Again, where did the clay, which is deposited in such gigantic 
masses, hundreds of feet thick, over the continent, come from ? We 
have seen that, according to Mr. Dawkins, " no such clay has been 
proved to have been formed, either in the Arctic regions, ivhence the 
ice-sheet has retreated, or in the districts forsaken by the glaciers. " 

If the Arctic ice-sheet does not create such a clay now, why did 
it create it centuries ago on the plains of England or Illinois ? 

The other day I traveled from Minnesota to Cape May, on the 
shore of the Atlantic, a distance of about fifteen hundred miles. At 
scarcely any point was I out of sight of the red clay and gravel of 
the Drift; it loomed up amid the beach-sands of New Jersey; it 
was laid bare by railroad-cuts in the plains of New York and 
Pennsylvania; it covered the highest tops of the Alleghanies at 
Altoona; the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin were 
raising crops upon it ; it was everywhere. If one had laid down a 
handful of the Wisconsin drift alongside of a handful of the New 
Jersey deposit, he could scarcely have perceived any difference 
between them. 

Here, then, is a geological formation, almost identical in character, 
fifteen hundred miles long from east to west, and reaching through 



EXTRACTS AND i^ELECTlONU, \\\ 

the whole leugth of North aud South America, from the Arctic 
Circle to Patagonia. 

Did ice grind this out of the granite ? 

Where did it get the granite ? The granite reaches the surface 
only in limited areas ; as a rule it is buried many miles in depth un- 
der the sedimentary rocks. 

How did the ice pick out its materials so as to grina nothing hut 
granite f 

This deposit overlies limestone and sandstone. The ice sheet 
rested upon them. Why were they not ground up with the granite ? 
Did the ice intelligently pick out a particular kind of rock, and that 
the hardest of them all ? 

But here is another marvel — this clay is red. The red is due to 
the grinding up of mica and hornblende. Granite is composed of 
quartz, feldspar and mica. In syenitic granite the materials are 
quartz, feldspar and hornblende. Mica and hornblende contain 
considerable oxide of iron, while feldspar has none. When mica 
aud hornblende are ground up, the result is blue or red clays, as the 
oxidation of the iron turns the clay red ; while the clay made of 
feldspar is light yellow or white. 

Now, then, not only did the ice sheet select for grinding the gran- 
ite rock, and refuse to touch the others, but it put the granite itself 
through some mysterious process by which it separated the feldspar 
from the mica and hornblende, and manufactured a white or yellow 
clay out of the one, which it deposited in great sheets by itself, as 
west of the Mississippi ; while it ground up the mica and hornblende 
and made blue or red clays, which it laid down elsewhere, as the 
red clays are spread over that great stretch of fifteen hundred miles 
to which I have referred. — RagnaroJc. 

The Wateks of Humiliation. Talk about drinking the 
waters of humiliation. I have drained them to the very dregs ; I 
have swallowed them by the quart, the gallon, the bucket-full, the 
barrel-full; I have been plunged into an ocean of them; I have been 
soaked in them, for years at a time, until every fiber of my being 
has shrieked out its protest against injustice and degradation.^ 
Journal, 1888. 

A Marriage for Money. Can high walls, rich lawns, wide 
fields and splendid trappings compensate the spirit, which, return-. 



112 DONNELLIANA. 

iug from its wauderings, finds no rest, no comfort, no repose ; but 
circles ever in restless flutterings around the empty image of a 
home ? — Essay, 1S53. 

Meaner than the Monkeys. It is an axiom that ^' no man 
can he safely left in the unrestrained power of any other man. " It 
was on this principle that we abohshed slavery. To say that a 
dozen men in Minneapolis, by the ticking of a telegraph, shall fix 
every year and every day the value of the productions of a hundred 
thousand farmers, and the resulting prosperity of all the merchants, 
professional men, mechanics and working people dependent on them, 
is to say that a gigantic wrong must be inflicted on the people. 
There never yet existed the power to oppress that oppression did 
not follow. Mankind is meaner than the monkeys and cruder than 
the wild beasts. We have only to look back a few hundred years to see 
the horrible outrages which unrestrained man inflicted on his fel- 
lows. In fact, w^e need only cross the ocean and visit the wretched 
cabins of Ireland, or the mines of Siberia, to learn that tigers and 
sharks are kinder to their kin than that " paragon of animals, " that 
" quintessence of dust, " the human creature. — Speech at Glencoe, 
1884. 

Education and the Newspaper. Neither did it follow that 
because a man was educated he was intelligent. There was a vast 
population of the middle class, who had received good educations, 
but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they 
derived it from their daily newspapers. The rich men owned the 
newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, prac- 
tically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. 
If these men had not been able to read and write they would have 
talked with one another upon public afiairs, and have formed some 
correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subju- 
gation ; they were chained to the chariots of the Oligarchy ; and 
they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright 
morning and found it was the Day of Judgment. — Ccesar^s Column. 

A Dozen Lives. 1 regret that I cannot live a dozen lives at 
once, with ten times the industry, for each one, that I am now 
capable of. — Journal, 1886. 

The Fires of Atlantis Still Burning. These facts would 
seem to show that the great fires which destroyed Atlantis are still 



EXTliA CIS A XI) SELECTIONS. 1 1 3 

smoldering in the depths of the ocean ; that the vast oscillations 
which carried Plato's continent beneath the sea may again bring it, 
with all its buried treasures, to the light ; and that even the wild 
imagination of Jules Verne, when he described Captain Nemo, in 
his diving- arm or, looking down upon the temples and towers of the 
lost island, lit by the fires of the submarine volcanoes, had some 
groundwork of possibility to build upon. — Atlantis. 

A Stra:nge Compound. He is not even an honest fanatic ; for 
all his viperishness and vituperativeness are at the service of the 
man who owns, for the time being, the collar upon his neck. He is 
that strangest of all compounds, a fanatic plugged with a post-ofi&ce ; 
and hence he combines the docility of the water- spaniel with the 
ferocity of the rat-terrier. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 

The Illumination of Intellect. 

As when the Chinese shade's raised figures stand, 

Wrought almost perfect by the artist's hand. 

And yet uneven, callous, cold and dull, 

Till the lit taper fills them, clear and full ; 

So woman's face, molded by skill divine. 

Graced with angelic beauty in each line. 

But meaningless and soulless meets the sight 

Till intellect comes freshening it with light ; 

And then, ah ! then, e?ich feature teems with grace, 

Mind, softened mind, looks saint-like from the face ; 

In each sweet, dimpled smile the light lies caught. 

And in the deep eyes dwell whole worlds of thought. — 1855. 

The White Manhood. " Smite me with sudden death, Lord 
God! " I cried aloud ; ^^ cover me with leprosy ; rot me with con- 
sumption ; infect me with all the racking pains that flesh inherits ; 
plunge me in poverty to the very lips; overwhelm me with shame 
and dishonor ; but give me back my body, my race, my white skin — 
that loftiest symbol of dignity and greatness throughout all the 
habitable world. Let me stand, if you will, God! at some street 
corner, lame and blind, and sick and sore, with outstretched hand, 
living upon the pitiful and contemptuous bounty of my kind; but 
give me back my white manhood ! Spare me this awful, this in- 
oomprehensible, this unprecedented affliction. And, Christ ! liavp 



114 , DONNELLIANA. 

your pitying eyes no glance of mercy for me ? You died on thfe 
cross, but you died a white man ? This is a living cross, a life-long 
crucifixion, compared with which the nails and the spear were 
merciful. — Doctor Huguet. 

INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND. 

Now, what is the root of all this ? It is the pioneer driving his 
plow for the first time into the surface of the wilderness. The whole 
structure rests upon the occupancy and ownership of the land by 
the individual. Hence follow independence^ self-respect, and all the 
incentives to labor; hence industry, intelligence, schools, society, 
development — not the hot-house development of the towns, but 
sturdy, healthy development, which has its roots in the earth, 
which expands in the family circle, and which brings strength and 
power to the best traits of human nature. 

We cannot overrate the importance of the subdivision of the land 
among the people. Being the original parent of all wealth, its bless- 
ing should be wide-spread and should reach as many as possible; 
otherwise it will concentrate in a few hands, and then will follow 
plethora for the few and pauperism for the many, until at last we 
realize the pitiful and lamentable condition of Europe, where the 
blood and tears and sweat of the afflicted cry from the earth like 
the blood of Abel. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, we owe to ever5»man who desires to possess 
it a reasonable portion of the unoccupied land of the nation. The 
right inheres in him and it inheres in the great mass of his fellow- 
men, because he and they are alike to be benefited — he directly, 
they indirectly. That right the homestead law recognizes and pro- 
tects. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 

AN ESSAY ON A DOG. 

What curious sympathy is this that binds Jack's intelligence 
to mine? 

I start out to take a walk. I may have lounged around, and in 
and out of the garden for hours, and wise old Jack never stirs; but 
now he sees the purpose in my walk or bearing, and he is up and 
away, gamboling with delight. 

He has been at liberty at any time to stroll off into the woods by 
himself; but the woods are nothing without companionship — nay, 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 115 

they are nothing without human companionship, for even a fellow- 
dog, who speaks his own language, does not appear to afford him 
the society which his master does. And yet what a vast interval of 
development separates Jack and me ! He comes of a wild, remote, 
barbarian stock that would originally have eaten me ; and I of a 
wild, remote, barbarian stock that would, with equal delight, have 
eaten Jack. And yet Jack is happy only in my approval. He will 
not stray far away from me; and if a nimble rabbit or impertinent 
squirrel tempts him aside he soon returns ; and if he takes the 
wrong path, how quickly he seeks me out, and is happy only in my 
presence. He is enjoying the walk and my society; that is most 
evident. 

Observe the expression of Jack's eyes under different circum- 
stances. Now he rolls and tumbles with another dog in play. See 
how his eyes sparkle. See how tenderly they grasp each other's 
limbs with their sharp teeth, conscious that they must not hurt one 
another in their mimic strife. Observe how the bigger dog tumbles 
Jack on his back and then rolls him backward and forward, as I 
have myself rolled and tumbled a romping youngster. Who says 
there is not in all this joviality, " fun, " kindness, fellowship and the 
sense of humor ; all Christian virtues, as we understand them ? 

I have seen Jack apologize with his eyes, as plainly as if he said 
in words: " I am exceedingly sorry for my misdemeanor; I humble 
myself before you as I would before my God. " 

And, in fact, as some one has well observed, we stand to dogs in 
the relation of gods. We hold in our hands, for them, the issues of 
life and death; we are, to them, the dispensers of perpetual 
bounty ; our houses, our implements, our arms, must strike them 
with an awe similar to that with which the Indian regards the man- 
ifestations of the Thunder-God. 

The ancients were not without some show of probability when 
they supposed that the souls of the dead revisited the earth in the 
bodies of animals. If there is a spiritual life outside of this material 
life, as we are taughl? to believe, who shall say what forms and 
modes of being it assumes ? May not that conscious entity, the 
soul, pass during countless ages, from planet to planet, through all 
those multitudinous systems which uni-ojl themselves, night after 
night, in magnificent pageantry before our gazef 



116 DONNELLIANA. 

Jack here, with his apologetic eyes, and his strong love of human 
companionship, may have been a philosopher on one of the planets 
of Aldebaran. Or he may have been an editor on one of those 
remote dots of light which go to make up that creamy, curdy 
streak which wo call " the Milky Way," Or, perchance, coming 
nearer home, he was a money-lender under Rameses, and exacted 
his shent per shent and ground the greasy faces of the garhc-eating 
Egyptian poor. Or he may have been a Roman soldier and carried 
his eagle before Caesar. If so, I do not wonder he is ashamed of his 
present degenerate state, tail and all, and apologizes for it out of 
his brown eyes. 

But whatever Jack is, wherever he came from, or wherever he is 
going. Jack loves me ; that is self-evident. He experiences spasms 
of exquisite pain whenever I scold him; he goes into paroxysms of 
dehght if I deign to notice him. There are lines of sympathy which 
link the contents of his poor httle imperfect brain-pan with my 
educated intelhgence. He can neither read nor write nor vote ; and 
yet he has, to a large degree, the same emotions and affections that 
I have; he loves and he hates; he enjoys and he suffers; he hung- 
ers and he thirsts; he has his friends and his enemies; he is fond of 
his home and even of his companion of tbe kennel; he is capable 
of rage, terror, gratitude, shame, modesty, reverence, merriment, 
humor and sorrow. He is even superstitious, and has a savage's 
horror of anything white shining out at him from the dark. And as 
superstition is simply a barbarous religion, he may even have some 
rudimentary dog-creed of his own, holding the same relation to a 
properly organized theology that his few rude tones of voice, where- 
with he expresses his emotions, hold to a cultivated language. 
Who knows what thoughts are in that hair-covered little cranium ; 
or what conceptions of his Creator are granted to him, vouchsafed 
out of the illimitable charity of God, but incommunicable to man ? 

How httle we know of that Mighty Power of which both Jack 
and I are simply expressions! This, at least, we can learn, that 
these humble creatures were built up out of the same dust, by the 
same great Architect; and that our first duty is to be kind to them. 
In some broad, pleasant, planet-embracing sense, we are their 
brethren; and we should make their poor, brief hves pleasant and 
comfortable. As we are gods in their eyes because of our power, we 



KXTMaCTS AM) SPJLl^JcrioNK 117 

fchould bo gods to them iu our mercy aud beneficeucc.— IV^c Anti- 
Monopolist. 

The Spirit of Komance. 
orient charm, that o'er dull commonplace 
Throws all our life can know of light or grace, 
Bring thou from out the mossed cells of age 
Remembrance fair of learning's storied page ; 
Give antique thought new life in beauty's brain, 
And bid young hearts make old love young again.— 1854. 
The Use of Tobacco. We are sometimes inclined to think that 
the injurious consequences resulting from the use of tobacco are as 
great as those from alcohol. To be sure, tobacco does not drfve men 
to murder and suicide and thus shock society, but it gradually un- 
dermines the system, and prepares it for the use of whisky, by 
creating a demand for the use of a more powerful stimulant.— T/^e 
Anti- Monopolist. 

Summer. 

Shade is gemmed aud worked in light, 

Rills of crystal Hash to sight, 

And the song-bird's dappled breast 

Quivers o'er its sun- touched nest.— 1854, 
Kings. The world has got no further use for that breed of 
beasts they call kings. When I think of the billions of human 
beings they have sent to death on the gallows, the block, the battle- 
field, and at the stake, I feel like wringing the neck of every last one 
of them. — Journal J 1890. 

The Intellect on the Outside of the Head. My intellect, 
my modes of thought, my acquired knowledge, my disposition, my 
feelings, my affections, everything, belonged to Doctor Huguet. It 
seemed to me that all these should shine through the apparel of the 
flesh, like a light through a porcelain shade. But no ; the world saw 
no further than the skin; men judged their fellows by their appear- 
ance. The convolutions of the brain are covered by the osseous 
plate of the impervious skull. And then I thought, why did not God 
place the character and mold of the mind on the outside of the 
head, so that men could recognize the intellects of their fellows, when 
they passed them in the street, as they now recognize the shape of 
their noses or chiusf How many lovely forms inclose a mental 



118 noNn:BLLiAnA. 

vacuum! How mauy grand souls look out through distorted, 
Socratic features ! But the human spirit dwells^ unhappily/ for itself, 
behind a mask — an impenetrable mask. — Doctor Huguet. 

THE COMET STRIKING THE EARTH. 

Let us try to conceive the effects of the fall of the material of 
the comet upon the earth. 

We have seen terrible rain-storms, hail-storms, snow-storms; 
but fancy a storm of stones and gravel and clay-dust! Not a mere 
shower either, but falling in black masses, darkening the heavens, 
vast enough to cover the world, in many places, hundreds of feet in 
thickness; leveling valleys, tearing away and grinding down hills, 
changing the whole aspect of the habitable globe. Without and 
above it roars the earthquaking voice of the terrible explosions; 
through the drifts of debris glimpses are caught of the glaring and 
burning monster ; while through all and over all is an unearthly 
heat, under which rivers, ponds, lakes, springs, disappear as if by 
magic. 

Now, reader, try to grasp the meaning of all this description. 
Do not merely read the words. To read aright, upon any subject, 
you must read below the words, above the words, and take In all 
the relations that surround the words. So read this record. 

Look out at the scene around you. Here are trees fifty feet 
high. Imagine an instantaneous descent of granite-sand and 
gravel sufficient to smash and crush these trees to the ground, to 
bury their trunks, and to cover the earth one hundred to five 
hundred feet higher than the elevation to which their tops, now 
reach ! And this is not alone here in your garden, or over your 
farm, or over your township, or over your county, or over your 
State; but over the whole continent in which you dwell — in short, 
over the greater part of the habitable world ! 

Are there any words that can draw, even faintly, such a picture, 
its terror, its immensity, its horrors, its destructiveness, its surpas- 
sal of all earthly experience and imagination'? And this human 
ant-hill, the world, how insignificant would it be in the grasp of 
such a, catastrophe ! Its laws, its temples, its hbraries, its religions, 
its armies, its mighty nations, would be but as the veriest stubble — 
dried grass, leaves, rubbish — crushed, smashed, buried, under this 
heaven-rain of horrors. 



J^JXTIUCTS AND SELECTiOisf^. m 

But, lo ! through the darkness, the wretches not beaten down 
and whelmed in the debris, but scurrying to mountain-caves for 
refuge, have a new terror: the cry passes from lip to lip, "The 
world is on fire ! " 

The head of the comet sheds down fire. Its gases have fallen in 
great volumes on the earth; they ignite; amid the whirling and rush- 
ing of the dehris, caught in cyclones, rises the glare of a Titanic 
conflagration. The winds beat the rocks against the rocks; they 
pick up sand heaps, peat beds and bowlders, and whirl them madly 
in the air. The heat increases. The rivers, the lakes, the ocean it- 
self, evaporate. 

And poor humanity ! Burned, bruised, wild, crazed, stumbhng, 
blown about like feathers in the hurricanes, smitten by mighty rocks, 
they perish by the million ; a few only reach the shelter of the cav- 
erns, and thence, glaring backward, look out over the ruins of a 
destroyed world. 

And not humanity alone has fled to these hiding-places; the ter- 
rified denizens of the forest, the domesticated animals of the fields, 
with the instinct which in great tempests has driven them into the 
houses of men, follow the refugees into the caverns. We shall see 
all this depicted in the legends. 

The first effect of the great heat is vaporization of the waters 
of the earth; but this is arrested long before it has completed its 
work. 

Still the heat is intense — how long it lasts, who shall tell? An 
Arabian legend indicates years. 

The stones having ceased to fall, the few who have escaped— 
and they are few indeed, for many are shut up forever by the clay- 
dust and gravel in their hiding-places, and on many others the con- 
vulsions of the earth have shaken down the rocky roofs of the caves 
— the few survivors come out, or dig their way out, to look upon a 
changed and blasted world. No cloud is in the sky, no rivers or lakes 
are on the earth ; only the deep springs of the caverns are left ; the 
sun, a ball of fire, glares in the bronze heavens.— jRa^waroA'. 

Cities. No great intellectual work was ever accomplished in a 
city. Time is consumed in frivohties. A thousand petty tempta- 
tions beckon away every moment of leisure. — Journal, 1886. 



120 • IJONNELLIANA. 

One of the Nation's Running Sores. We clip from the 
Pioneer-Press the following standing advertisement : 

" Divorces legally obtained for incompatibility^ etc. ; residence 
unnecessary; fee after decree. Address P. 0. Box 1037, Chicago, 
111." 

That "etc." covers everything. "Residence unnecessary." 
That is to say, a citizen of St. Paul or Crow Wing who has tired of 
his wife, or fancies a younger or more buxom lass, can, without leav- 
ing home, for an " etc." obtain a divorce, without notice to his wife, 
and turn the partner of his bosom out of doors, perhaps onto the 
town, to make a living by adding to the maelstrom of vice which 
threatcDS to swallow society. Surely any belief as to the next 
world which preserves virtue and morality in this world, fe better 
than this worship of the god Priapus which is now taking possession 
of the world, and turning society into a prolonged Roman saturnalia. 
Aud any friend of his country and his kind would cry God- speed 
to all the churches of the land, that are working together for 
good, and seek to unite them in a livelier sense of Christian brother- 
hood, as Moody and Sankey and other members of the " Broad 
Church" are doing to-day, instead of reviving the passions, hatreds 
and bigotries of a by-gone age. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

To the Sky-laek, Singing in the Dawn. 

Go, — voice of earth ! 
Go to the listening and ethereal forms 
That, in the dim light, bend above the world, 
Waiting sweet message from the waking earth, 
And tell delightful stories of the flowers ; 
The dew-besprinkled grass; the shadowy woods; 
The long, sweet paths, hedge-bordered ; and the homes 
Brimming with hope and love. 
And, 'mid the faint wreaths of the fading mist, 
Through the last tracings of the dying night, 
Let them bear heavenward the golden tale, — 
That earth, anew, takes up the tasks of God, 
And bears them on in joy. — 1S53. 
Fair Plat eor the South. If the nation is to live it must 

not be with one section fastened like a wolf on the vitals of the rest. 

Nothing endures in this world but justice. — Speech to Grangers j 1873. 



J^XTHA CTS AND SKLECTl ONS. I2i 

A Sub-Kingdom by Himself. The Pioneer-Press thus divides 
up the Senate : — 

Republicans o^ 

Democrats To 

Donnelly .".".'.".".'.".'.".*.*."." 1 

Republican majoritj' -,3 

Good. We are not ranked in any department 'of the animals in 
the pohtical menagerie but are a variety, species, order and sub- 
kmgdom, by ourself. As Shakespeare says, 

" Take him for all in all, 
We ne'er shall look upon his like again. " 

— The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 
The Sea-Bird. 

Like the sea-bird's pinions gray, 

Beating up, in skyward flight, 

'Mid the sunset's golden light. 

— The Mourner's Vision, 1850, 
The Brotherhood of Justice. - Universal education is 
right - It IS necessary, " I said, - but it is not all-sufficient. Educa- 
tion will not stop corruption or misgovernment. No man is fit to be 
free unless he possesses a reasonable share of education; but every 
man who possesses that reasonable share of education is not fit to 
be free. A man may be able to read and write and yet be a fool or 
a knave. What is needed is a society which shall bring to Labor 
the aid of the same keenness, penetration, foresight, and even cun- 
mug, by which wealth has won its triumphs. Intellect should have 
Its rewards, but it should not have everything. But this defense of 
Labor can only spring from tlie inspiration of God, for the natural 
mstinct of man, in these latter days, seems to be to prey on his fel- 
low. We are sharks that devour the wounded of our own kind - 
Ccesar's Cohimn. 

The People's Party. Our politics to-day is in a chaotic state : 
but It IS the chaos that precedes creation ; out of it the voice of God 
will yet be heard crying, " Let there be light; " and we shall see, 
clearly arrayed against each other, two well-defined parties, facing 
each other hke warring lions. The one party representing wealth 
as agamst manhood, the old ideas against the new, the old world 



i2'j DONNELLXAN'A. 

against the new; representing sordid greed, grasping injustice, 
accumulation and concentration, illiberality and indifference to the 
rights of the humble. On the other hand, we shall have a party 
laying its foundation deep and wide on the popular heart, filled with 
the divine spirit of Him who preached from the Mount charity, jus- 
tice and brotherhood ; solicitous to preserve liberty because liberty 
makes possible all things of good to man j solicitous to hold together 
the nation, because even a continent is too small for the working out 
of God's benevolonce to man ; solicitous, by example and sympathy, 
to lift up alt the oppressed of the earth, and strike down cruelty and 
wrong wherever they may show their hideous heads. — Speech at 
Glencoe, 1884. ' 

Bacon's Magnanimity. And, still speaking of himself, he 
continues with this noble thought : 

'■ It may be you will do posterity good, if out of the carcass of dead and rotten 
greatness, as out of Samson's lion, there may be honey gathered for the use of fut- 
ure times." 

What a noble, what a splendid image is this ! How the meta- 
phor is interwoven, Shakespeare- v/ise, not as a distinct comparison, 
but into the entire body of the thought. He is appealing for mercy, 
for time to finish his great works ; he is himself already " dead and 
rotten greatness," but withal majestic greatness; he is Samson's 
lion, but in the carcass the bees have made their hive and hoarded 
honey for posterity. And what a soul ! That in the hour of ruin 
and humihation, sacrificed, as I believe, to save a dishonest king 
and a degraded favorite, could still love humanity and look for- 
ward to its w^\fsiYG.—The Great Cryptogram. 

The Forest Spring. 

A darkling hollow, by the rocks o'ershaded, 

Into whose pooly cup the waters purl ; 
Where, when the long-lived summer day hath faded, 

Drink the small forest bird and woodland squirrel. — 1851. 

<' The Distinguished Educators." These "distinguished 
educators" are generally afraid to say " beans," unless some other 
" distinguished educator" puts their hps in shape, and starts them 
on the h.—TJie Anti- Monopolist. 



Extracts and selections. 123 

an old library. 

JBut aii old library is, indeed, a sad object to contemplate. It 
represents so much of abandoned errors and disappointed ambitions, 
that to examine its shelves is very much like walking through an 
old church-yard. And what can be sadder than to look upon the 
graves of the dead and consider that houses, lands, furniture, goods, 
gold, silver, horses, cattle, books, grief, merriment, love, hate, are 
all taken away from the departed, and they are all brought down to 
a little, ghastly, erect stone, and a memory that grows fainter and 
fainter every day, and at last disappears utterly in the awful abyss 
of universal oblivion. 

Thus an old library is a sort of intellectual graveyard ; we find 
in it hundreds of forgotten books by forgotten men, who sought thus 
to drag a fragment of remembrance out of the black waters of Lethe, 
and fondly hoped that their works would live and occupy the minds 
of mankind for many generations. How marvelously the living 
creature shrinks from annihilation ! And yet Time will obliterate 
the memory even of Homer. That universal maw spares nothing 
that is or was. 

" Time hath, my lord, a vallet at his back, 
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion ; 
A gi-eat-sized monster of ingratitude : 
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured 
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 
As done." 

— Doctor Huguet. 
" EVERY BAD LAW BUILDS TAVERNS." 

" In the Public Health Congress convened by the King of Belgium, 
one delegate caught a glimpse of an important truth when he ob- 
served that, if the general condition of the people were improved, 
they Avould drink less." — Harper's Weekly. 

That's it. The root and ground of all moral reform is just laws. 
An oppressed people are always a poor people, and a poor people 
are very apt to be a degraded people. Sin is a kind of moral sweat, 
whose fountains are dirt and wretchedness. 

To the drunkard intoxication is often a substitute for a thick 
coat, a warm fire, a full stomach and a bright home. Give him all 
these, and rum has lost its charms. But without these he seeks ob- 
livion in the lethean waters of strong drink. 



124 l)ONNJ^LLiAMA. 

If you would reform a people give them prosperity ; and this 
comes only by taking from their throats the vampires that suck 
away the fruits of their industry. 

Every bad law builds taverns. — Anti- Monopolist. 

The Non-Education of Votees. What a lovely time there 
would be in one of those great Northern cities if the wealthier classes 
turned out on election day and murdered a few workingmen for try- 
ing to vote ! How much of that town would be up in the air in the 
form of smoke before nightfall? How many of those intelligent 
bankers and brokers, and lawyers, and railroad presidents, would 
be ready to adorn a graveyard before supper- time ? But let us go 
a step further. Let us suppose that the ruling class not only tried 
to keep the workingmen from voting by murdering them, but went 
so far as to shut up the school-houses and deny them education, and 
employ the whole power of the civilized state to make them brutes 
and savages'? What a hell-upon-earth would they prepare for 
themselves ! What a cheerful place that would be for a cultured 
gentleman of quiet and refined tastes to reside in, where the vast 
majority of the people around him, male and female, were uncivil- 
ized monsters, as enlightened as gorillas, and as bloodthirsty as 
thugs. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Immohtality of the Soul. Who can doubt that there is 
another life ? Who, that knows the immortality of matter, its abso- 
lute indestructibility, can believe that mind, intelligence, soul, — 
which must be, at the lowest estimate — if they are not something 
higher — a form of matter, — are to perish into nothingness ? If it be 
true, as we know it is, that the substance of the poor flesh that robes 
your spirits — nay, of the very garments you wear — shall exist, un- 
diminished by the friction of eternity, aeons after our planet is blot- 
ted out of space and our sun forgotten, can you believe that this in- 
telligence, whereby I command your souls into thought, and com- 
municate with the unsounded depths of your natures, can be clipped 
off into annihilation ? Nay, out of the very bounty and largess of 
God I speak unto you ; and that in me which speaks, and that in 
you which listens, are alike part and parcel of the eternal Maker of 
all things, without whom is nothing made. — Ccesafs Column. 

The Green Altars of God. Let us take no steps backward. 
Our forefathers gave us a republic ; let us preserve and perfect it. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 125 

Let us, upon the graves of our dead soldiers, as upon the green 
altars of God, register our vows that the shadow upon the dial of 
time shall not be turned back. Let our children learn, by the cere- 
monies of to-day, the priceless value of their heritage ; let them be 
taught how the repubhc honors those who die for it. So shall they 
stand ready, in their day and generation, to spring to the defense of 
the national life whenever threatened by internal or external foes; 
and so, from age to age, the flower-covered graves of patriots shall 
be the stepping-stones along which humanity shall advance, with 
giant strides, to the perfection of its development and the fulfill- 
ment of its destiu J. —Memorial Address, 1884. 
The Moonlight. 
Oh! mourner o'er a blind yet beauteous world, 
Gray shadow of the daylight.— 1850. 
The Negroes ii^ the Civil War. '' The negroes are the most 
patient and forbearing and gentle people in the world. Imagine a 
body of white slaves, during our late civil war, in charge of the 
plantations, with the woaaen and children at their mercy, while 
their masters were at the front fighting to decide whether their 
slavery should end or continue forever ! If they had been English- 
men, or Irishmen, or Germans — or even Scotchmen, Major — the 
heavens would have been lurid with midnight flames, and the 
Southern soldiers would have had to rush home, to find the calcined 
bones of their best beloved shining white in the ashes of their hab- 
itations. Nor was this from lack of native courage on the part of 
the blacks; for, when armed by the Northern generals and placed 
in the field of battle, they fought like demons. No; it was natural 
goodness, and it should make every Southern father and husband 
feel more kindly to these poor black creatures, who had .everything 
at their mercy and refused to shed a drop of white blood, or bring 
shame and despair to the face of a single white woman. The history 
of the human family does not aff"ord another illustration of like for- 
bearance under like circumstances. "— i)oc^or Hugiiet. 

The Course of Human Progress. The savage man is a 
pitiable creature; as Menaboshu says, in the Chippeway legends, he 
is pursued by a '' perpetual hunger;" he is exposed unprotected to 
the blasts of winter and the heats of summer. A great terror sits 
upon his soul; for every manifestation of nature — the storm, the 



126 DONNELLIANA. 

wind; the thunder, the hghtning, the cold, the heat— all are threat- 
ening and dangerous demons. The seasons bring him neither seed- 
time nor harvest; pinched with hunger, appeasing in part the ever- 
lasting craving of his stomach with seeds, berries and creeping 
things, he sees the animals of the forest dash by him, and he has 
no means to arrest their flight. He is powerless and miserable in 
the midst of plenty. Every step toward civilization is a step of con- 
quest over nature. The invention of the bow and arrow was, in its 
time, a far greater stride forward for the human race than the 
steam-engine or the telegraph. The savage could now reach his 
game; his insatiable hunger could be satisfied; the very eagle, 
" towering in its pride of place, '' was not beyond the reach of this 
new and wonderful weapon. The discovery of fire and the art of 
cooking was another immense step forward. The savage, having 
nothing but wooden vessels in which to cook, covered the wood 
with clay; the clay hardened in the fire. The savage gradually 
learned that he could dispense with the wood, and thus pottery was 
invented. Then some one (if we are to^believe the Chippeway le- 
gends on the shores of Lake Superior) found fragments of the pure 
copper of that region, beat them into shape, and the art of metal- 
lurgy was begun; iron was first worked in the same way by shaping 
meteoric iron into spear-heads. — Atlantis. 

Mankind. Mankind is a phantasmagoria of ghosts clad in 
matter. — Journal^ 1885. 

Geant and Washbuene Compaeed. Shall the two names 
go down in history together! Grant and Washburne! What a 
combination! Why, Mr. Speaker, the intellect of Grant is like 
some of those ancient warehouses, in the great cities of the older 
continent, where floor rises above floor, and cellar descends below 
cellar, all packed full to overflowing with the richest merchandise. 
The intellect of the gentleman from Illinois is like some of those 
establishments we see on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the entire 
stock in trade of the merchant is spread out in the front window, 
and over it is a label, ''Anything in this window for one dollar." 
[Laughter.] Why, sir, he is the " Cheap John" of legislation. [Great 
\a,nghteY.] — Speechin Congress. 

The Teue Docteine. In the welfare of the many will be 
found the prosperity of each. It is easy to grow rich where all are 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 127 

prosperous; it is not difficult to fall iuto poverty in the midst of the 
poor. Justice and liberty are the parents of boundless and endless 
prosperity; injustice and oppression mean wasteful luxuries for the 
few and wretchedness for the many. — Memorial Address, 1814. 

THE ANCIENT KELIGIONS. 

There are many things which indicate that a far- distant, pre- 
historic race existed in the background of Egyptian and Baby- 
lonian development, and that from this people, highly civilized 
and educated, we have derived the arrangement of the heavens 
into constellations, and our divisions of time into days, weeks, 
years and centuries. This people stood much nearer the Drift 
Age than we do. They understood it better. Their legends 
and religious beliefs were full of it. The gods carved on Hin- 
doo temples, or painted on the walls of Assyrian, Peruvian or 
American structures, the flying dragons, the winged gods, the 
winged animals, Gucumatz, Rama, Siva, Vishnu, Tezcatlipoca, were 
painted in the very colors of the clays which came from the disin- 
tegration of the granite, "red, white and blue," the very colors 
which distinguished the comet ; and they are all reminiscences of 
that great monster. The idols of the pagan world are, in fact, con- 
gealed history, and will some day be intelligently studied as such. 

Doubtless this ancient astronomical, zodiac-building and con- 
stellation-constructing race taught the people the true doctrine of 
comets; taught that the winding serpent, the flying dragon, the 
destructive winged dog, or wolf, or lion, whose sphinx-like images 
now frown upon us from ancient walls and doorways, were really 
comets; taught how one of them had actually struck the earth, and 
taught that in the lapse of ages another of these multitudinous 
wanderers of space would again encounter our globe, and end all 
things in one universal conflagration. 

And down through the race this belief has come, and down 
through the race it will go, to the consummation of time.— Bag- 
narok. 

A Difference. Many a man mistakes an overloaded stomach 
for an overburdened mind. — Journal, 1883. 

True. To the drunk all things are drunk.— /o^*n^a^, 1884. 



128- DONNELLIANA. 

FENCING-IN AMERICA. 

But we are told that this Protective System will increase the 
number of consumers in the United States, and that this " home 
market " will be nearer to us than to the Russians or Hungarians. 
What advantage is this, if we do not obtain a higher price than 
the world's price? And what market can be better than the 
market of the whole world? Is a part greater than the whole? 
Why fence ourselves in and isolate ourselves from the rest of 
mankind, in an effort to create a market in New England big- 
ger and better than that of the habitable globe? This is on the 
principle of the fellow who said that there was more room in his 
barn than there was out of doors. Where are the great masses of 
consumers? In Europe, in those dense hives from which we 
swarmed. There, there are nearly 300,000,000 people. Of these 
thero are 150,000,000 who consume cereals to the amount of one 
billion bushels annually. Nature in those densely crowded countries 
has hxcd a limit to the growth of food; all the land is occupied. 
The entire Russian export of wheat amounted in 1857 to but 
49,000,000 bushels, about twice that of the single State of Min- 
nesota. 

Here in this great West are the grain fields of the world. Why 
build a wall between producers and consumers ? Why interpose a 
barrier between the wheat-bins and corn-cribs of America and the 
stomachs of Europe ? Why turn our backs upon the 150,000,000 of 
Europe for the sake of a quarter of a million protected manufac- 
turers in America? In Illinois thousands of bushels of corn have 
been burned this winter as fuel for lack of purchasers ; in London 
hundreds of human beings have perished this winter from " starva- 
tion fever." — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

THE WORLD AFTER THE GREAT CATASTROPHE. 

For the legends show us that when, at last, the stones and clay 
had ceased to fall, and the fire had exhausted itself, and the rem- 
nant of mankind were able to dig their way out, they returned to 
an awful wreck of nature. 

Instead of the fair face of the world, as they had known it, 
bright with sunUght, green with the magnificent foliage of the forest, 
or the gentle verdure of the plain, they go forth upon a wasted, an 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 129 

unknown land, covered with oceans of mud and stones ; the very- 
face of the country changed — lakes, rivers, hills, all swept away 
and lost. They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, 
under the shadow of an awful darkness ; a darkness which knows no 
morning, no stars, no moon; a darkness palpable and visible, lighted 
only by electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars 
of thunder as we, in this day of harmonious nature, can form no con- 
ception of. It is, indeed, "chaos and ancient night." All the 
forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling 
each other, and multiphed a thousand-fold in power; the winds are 
cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling. 

The world is more desolate than the caves from which they have 
escaped. The forests are gone; the fruit-trees are swept away; 
the beasts of the chase have perished; the domestic animals, gentle 
ministers to man, have disappeared; the cultivated fields are 
buried deep in drifts of mud and gravel; the people stagger in the 
darkness against each other; they fall into the chasms of the earth; 
within them are the two great oppressors of hiunanity, hunger and 
terror ; hunger that knows not where to turn ; fear that shrinks 
before the whirling blasts, the rolling thunder, the shocks of blind- 
ing lightning; that knows not what moment the heavens may 
again open and rain fire and stones and dust upon them. 

God has withdrawn his face; his children are deserted; all the 
kindly adjustments of generous nature are gone. God has left man 
in the midst of a material world without law ; he is a wreck, a 
fragment, a lost particle, in the center of an inimitable and endless 
warfare of giants. 

Some lie down to die, hopeless, cursing their helpless gods; 
some die by their owm hands ; some gather around the fires of vol- 
canoes for warmth and light — stars that attract them from afar off; 
some feast on such decaying remnants of the great animals as they 
may find projecting above the debris, running to them, as we shall 
see, with outcries, and fighting over the fragments. — Ragnarok. 

Rather Fight than Pay Taxes. There was a considerable 
number of real Irishmen, the unadulterated, simon-pure article, went 
out into ^Vestern Pennsylvania. They were poor people, but, like all 
the race, courageous and warlike. The peaceful Germans and 
Qnakers agreed tliat if they would fight the Indians and keep them 



130 BONNELLIANA. 

off the settlements they should be exempted from taxation, and 
there never was an Irishman yet who would not rather fight than 
pay taxes. — ^ami Patrick's Day Speech, Grand Forks, JD. T., 1884. 

The Forest Wateefall. 
Where the rocks are heaped o'er the tangled glen, 

Where the stream is rained, all mangled and rent, 
Where the hemlocks peer o'er a sunless den.— 1850. 

Prayer. A good prayer is a charitable purpose j — or, better, 
a charitable SiCt.^^Journal, 1884. 

Keligiok and Law. Human law is but a pen-and-ink sketch 
of virtue. Law is virtue in the actions of men ; religion is virtue in 
the innermost recesses of the soul. No sin is reprehensible by law 
until it takes the form of actioii ; but rehgion stands at the womb 
of thought and apprehends crime in its very conception. It modifies 
the ovum when hfe first touches it. The one is restraint ; the other 
goodness. — Essay, 1885. 

Kings as Doctors. What king of Assyria, or Greece, or Rome, 
or even of these modern nations, has ever devoted himself to the 
study of medicine and the writing of medical books for the benefit 
of mankind ? Their mission has been to kill, not to heal the people. 
Yet here, at the very dawn of Mediterranean history, we find the 
son of the first king of Egypt recorded " as a physician, and as 
having left anatomical books." — Atlantis, 

Southern Kindliness to the Negro. My friends carae often 
to see me. Their visits provoked no comment, for there is a great 
deal of gentle charity in the South from the white people, especially 
the ladies, to the sick and poor among the negroes. Indeed, strange 
a£ it may appear, in view of the political rivalries and hostihties, the 
strongest bonds of love extend from one race to the other. I have 
known a struggling white gentleman, with but a small income, set 
aside one-fourth of it every month for the support of his " mammy, " 
an ancient and helpless nurse, whose black breasts had fed him in 
his infancy ; and I have known the dark foster-mother to love her 
white charge more tenderly than her own offspring. It is a great 
pity that, among such noble and generous natures, political differ- 
ences should ever arise to array them against each other, when they 
should all dwell together in peaceful Christian Iqve and charity, l^ut 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 131 

time will sweep away these evils, and leave only good behind ; for 

God rules, and His path is toward the betterment of mankind. 

Doctor Huguet. 

Bacon. If Bacon built the causeway over which modern science 
has advanced, it was because, mounting on the pinions of his mag- 
nificent imagination, he saw that poor, strugghng mankind needed 
such a pathway ; his heart embraced humanity even as his brain 
embraced the universe. The river, which is a boundary to the rabbit, 
is but a landmark to the eagle. Let not the gnawers of the world, 
the rodentia, despise the winged creatures of the upper air. — 
Bagnarok. 

The Oppression of the South. It is said that we propose to 
oppress the people of the South. It would be well if such oppression 
could cover the whole surface of the known world ! Ours is an op- 
pression which makes free; ours a despotism which builds the school- 
house and the printing-office ; ours a tryanny which sets the plow 
moving in the furrow and covers the lakes and rivers with the white 
wings of commerce. God give the world abundance of such oppres- 
sion. — Speech in Congress, Dec. 2, 1864. 

Christ, the Great Iconoclast. He who drove the money- 
changers out of the temple, and denounced the aristocrats of his 
country as whited sepulchers, and preached a communism of goods, 
would not view to-day with patience or equanimity the dreadful 
sufferings of mankind. We have inherited Christianity without 
Christ ; we have the painted shell of a religion, and that which rat- 
tles around within it is not the burning soul of the Great Iconoclast, 
but a cold and shriveled and meaningless tradition. Oh! for the 
quick-pulsing, warm-beatiug, mighty human heart of the man of 
Galilee ! Oh ! for his uplifted hand, armed with a whip of scorpions, 
to depopulate the temples of the world, and lash his recreant 
preachers into devotion to the cause of his poor, afflicted children, 
— Ccesar^s Column. 

THE TRAMP. 

'' Among these signs and tokens there is not one, perhaps, ii],>r(> 
significant than the appearance in the States of a personage hitherto 
almost entirely unknown in the transatlantic economv,a cicatuie 
undreamed of by Humboldt, uncontemplated by De'Tocqueville, 
whose presence on Federal soil was certainly never reckoned ui;ou 



132 DONNELLIANA. 

by the Fathers of the Republic, Washington, Jefferson and Adams. 
The objectionable and portentous being to whom we allude is that 
old and inveterate scourge of Europe, the 'tramp.'" — London 
Standard. 

And why the "tramp''? He is the result of misgovernment, 
the sad protest of wretchedness against unjust laws. Is there not 
abundance in God's world for all His children, if the substance of 
thousands is not squandered on the few ? And what higher duty 
has law or government than to protect the humble many in the enjoy- 
ment of life and property ? 

We had no " tramps " until the United States entered on a per- 
nicious system of legislation. Now they cover the land. And 
where is it to end ? — The Anti-Monopolist, 1S75. 

The Dead Bear no Arms. But the graves teach us another 
lesson — Charity. They tell us that the war is ended. These dead 
have no weapons by their side. They repose, unarmed, in the embrace 
of their great Creator. You cannot find the scars in their ashes. 
" From their unpolluted dust shall violets spring. " Infinite Nature, 
with her million supple, busy fingers, is carrying away all that is 
mortal of them, and transforming it into grass and leaves and flow- 
ers ; and over 

' ' The low, green tent, 
Whose curtain never outward swings, " 

in the midst of plenty and of peace, " with an aspect as if she pitied 
men, " mighty Nature preaches the great gospel of Charity. — Memo- 
rial Address, 1884. 

Religion. What we need in religion is a remedy for abuses, 
not an ansBsthetic. — Journal, 1885. 

Political Toleration. There are a thousand reasons why 
we rejoice to-night. We rejoice that we live in the greatest age of 
the world's history ; in the greatest nation that has ever dwelt on 
God's footstool; under the most benign institutions that have ever 
blessed mankind. We rejoice that we have so great and wise and 
self-controlled a population that the political government of fifty 
millions of people and thousands of millions of wealth can pass from 
one great party to another without the shedding of one drop of blood; 
with less disturbance, in fact, than oftentimes accompanies a parlia- 
mentary struggle in a single shire in England. We rejoice in the 
character of our people ; in the moderation and good-nature with 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. u\<,~i 

which, after tweDty-four years of power, the (U^'eated have taken de • 
feat. To my mind one of the finest ilhistrations of American civili. 
zation was given the other day in Phihidelphia, when the great Rc- 
])uhhcan ckib-house, the Union League, ilhiminated in honor of the 
Democratic celebration. This is as it should be. Our contests are 
not battles of armies, thirsting for each other's destruction ; but the 
disputations of brothers, as to which possess the best policy for the 
hiiiipiness of both. — Sxocech, 1885. 

A Farewell to Sullivax County, Pennsylvania. 

No more the bending pole, for me no more 

The speckled trout lies flapping on the shore. 

No more, alas, I creep at early dawn. 

Where browse the stalking buck and restless fawn, 

In desert clearings — desert long ago — 

Where now, all rank, the wild oats only grow. 

No more, alone, from the gray mountain peak, 

I watch the shadowy morn rise wan and weak, 

And see the pale day gathering round the height 

While all below still lingers wrapped in night. — 1851. 

THE FEVER OF CREATION. 

There come bursts of creative force in history, when great 
thoughts are born, and then again Brahma, as the Hindoos say, goes 
to sleep for ages. 

But, when the fever of creation comes, the poet, the inventor or 
the philosopher can no more arrest the development of his own 
thoughts than the female bird, by her will-power, can stop the 
growth of the ova within her, or arrest the fever in the blood which 
forces her to incubation. 

The man who wrote the Shakespeare plays recognized this in- 
voluntary operation of even his own transcendent intellect, when he 
said: 

" Our poesy is a gum which oozes 
From whence 'tis nourished." 

It came as the Arabian tree distilled its " medicinal gum;'' it 
was the mere expression of an internal force, as much beyond his 
control as the production of the gum was beyond the control of the 
X'^QQ.—Itagnarok. 



134 DON^ELLIANA. 

Advice to the Editors. My friends, whenever yoil put perl 
to paper, feel the full significance of your act. Never write a sylla- 
ble that tends to make virtue ridiculous or rehgion contemptible. 
Dogmas may perish, but the essential soill of goodness in the heart 
of creeds will live on, amid all the mutations of mankind, unless 
stamped out by the feet of vice or folly. Ncvei^ write a word that 
tends to make mankind sordid or degraded. In a little while we 
shall all be heaps of dust; but the race will live on, shining, magni- 
ficent, inextinctable — the never-ending, the consolidated, the im- 
mortal man. As the coral insect makes continents, so we are build- 
ing up the race out of our lives. Call the people to the higher levels 
of their natures ; summon them forward to all goodness ; put before 
them the highest standards of life and action. Defend them in all 
their rights, and resist oppression from whatever quarter it may 
come. And so, when a greater age writes thehistory of the present, it 
will point to a noble, an exalted, a heroic people ] and it will say, 
'^ This was the work of the men who possessed the avenues of pub- 
lic thought, in the State of Wisconsin, a generation ago. They did 
their duty to their age and to posterity. May their memory remain 
green through all the ages, in the hearts of the race they hQWQ- 
m^Q^.^'— Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 

The Local Associations of Genius. Genius, though its 
branches reach to the heavens and cover the continents, yet has its 
roots in the earth ; and its leaves, its fruits and flowers, its texture 
and its fibers, bespeak the soil in which it was nurtured. Hence in 
the writings of every great master we find mqre or less association 
with the scenes in which his youth and manhood were passed — re- 
flections, as it were, on the camera of the imagination, of those land- 
scapes with which destiny had surrounded him. — The Great Crypto- 
gram. 

The Pure Soul. The purified individual soul we may not 
underestimate. These are the swept and garnished habitations 
where the angels dwell and look with unpolluted eyes upon the 
world. — Ccesar^s Column. 

The Invisible World. Was there anything in nature more than 
we could see ? My brain was whirling ; for, on the instant, like a re- 
volving panorama, it seemed to me that all space flashed, circling 
ground me, densely packed with unknown creatures, with indescriba- 



EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS. 135 

bio tbi-ins that Howod iuto each other, and the universe was full effaces 
and eyes, all centered upon me; faces misty and shadowy, through 
which other eyes looked; faces behind faces, mingling with each 
other, as if the illimitable void had not room enough for the intelli- 
gences with which God had packed and crowded \t.— Doctor Huguet. 
Dives' Heaven. And Dives has an unexpressed belief that 
heaven is only a larger Wall Street, where the millionaires occupy 
the front benches, while those who never had a bank account on 
earth sing in the chorus. — Bagnarok. 

Minds and Burdens. Minds are hke backs : what is a fitting 
burden for one will break another. — 1S55. 

Night. 

The slow-limbed night, with a halt, laggard pacing. 
Has thrust his dark and bronzed shield before ; 

And, like a Spartan warrior, stands facing, 
'Mid the rayed sunset, all the brunt of war; 

And where a dart strikes hard there quivering clings a star. 

—1851. 
Great Thoughts. All great thoughts are inspirations of God. 
They are part of the mechanism by which He advances the race; 
they are new varieties created out of old genera. — Bagnarok. 

The Eaces of Europe and America. When science is able 
to disabuse itself of the Mortonian theory that the aborigines of 
America are all red men and all belong to one race, we may hope 
that the confluence upon the continent of widely diflerent races from 
different countries may come to be recognized and intelligently 
studied. There can be no doubt that red, white, black and yellow 
men have united to form the original population of America. And 
ther^ can be as little doubt that the entire population of Europe and 
the south shore of the Mediterranean is a mongrel race — a combina- 
tion, in varying proportions, of a dark-brown or red race with a white 
race; the characteristics of the different nations depending upon the 
proportions in which the dark and hght races are mingled, for pecuUar 
mental and moral characteristics go with these complexions. The 
red-haired people are a distinct variety of the white stock. There 
were once whole tribes and nations with this color of hair; their 
blood is now intermingled with all the races of men from Palestine 



136 DONNELLIANA. 

to Iceland. Everything in Europe speaks of vast periods of time 
and long-continued and constant interfusion of blood, until there is 
not a fair-skinned man on the Continent that has not the blood of 
the dark-haired race in his veins, nor scarcely a dark-skinned man 
that is not lighter in hue from intermixture with the white stock. — 
Atlantis. 

The FailuE"E of the Churches. To make a few virtuous 
while the many are vicious is to place goodness at a disadvantage. 
To teach the people patience and innocence in the midst of craft 
and cruelty is to furnish the red- mouthed wolves with wooly, bleat- 
ing lambs. Hence the grip of the churches on humanity has been 
steadily lessening during the past two hundred years. Men perma- 
nently love only those things that are beneficial to them. The 
churches must come to the rescue of the people, or retire from the 
field. — Ccesar^s Column. 

The Farmers xist> the Eailroads. Why is this? The rail- 
road men are sharp, and quick, and bold. The farmers are dull, 
and slow, and timid. The railroads are thoroughly organized and 
act together." The farmers have not heretofore been organized, and 
have divided on a dozen immaterial questions. The railroads buy 
up the politicians, and the politicians humbug the farmers. The 
railroads act for themselves ; the farmers dare do nothing without 
consulting some lawyer, editor or cross-roads wire-puller. The 
railroads own the newspapers, and the newspapers lash the farmers 
back into the party lines. In short, the corporations are superb 
rogues, and the farmers helpless and honest fools. If any man takes 
the farmer's part, editors, politicians and corporations raise a howl, 
a regular hue and cry against him, and too often the very farmers 
drop their hoes and scythes and join with a yell in the pursuij;. If 
any man takes the corporation's part there is no hue and cry; they 
measure him by his capacity for service, and pay him accordingly. 
— Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

As A rule, simple races repeat; they do not invent. — BagnaroJc. ' 

The Old and the New Creeds. Our fathers, when they 
founded this nation, planted it upon a new conception — that con- 
ception was the equality and happiness of mankind ; not of the fav- 
ored few, but the universal many. In the old world all the forces of 



l^XThA CTS A XJ) SKLFA 'TtONS. 1 :;7 

the govoriimeiit tiic bent to help those who ai'e on top; hero they 
are heut to help those who are at the bottom. The old creed was : 
" Take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor." 
The new creed is : " Take care of the poor, and the rich will take 
care of themselves. " The old creed meant : Proscription, privilege, 
concentration of wealth, injustice, degradation, aristocracy, mon- 
archy. The new creed means: Equality, opportunity, universal hap- 
piness, general wealth, an undying republic, and unexampled 
growth. — Speech, 1885. 

The Woods. 
Oh ! dim are the woods where the quiet is held, 
Like a Titan of old, that had fought against God ; 
Oh ! dim are the woods, where the tree-tops of eld 
Are barring the hght from the leaf-buried sod. 
Where Ainder the boughs the shadows are deep, 
Herded and huddled like flocks of sheep, 
That nestle them down in their silent sleep. 
And slumber and slumber for aye : 
While out on the hills, with a searching eye, 
The rose-lipped sunbeam is wandering by, 
Like a shepherd that looks in the dells to spy 
The shades that have stolen astray. 

—The Mourner^ s Vision, 1850. 

The Responsibility. Whenever religion consents to injustice 
it consents to all the vices which spring from injustice, and becomes 
thereby the very ally of the Devil. — Journal, 1885. 

Christianity. And while we may regret the errors of religion, 
in the past or in the present, let us not forget its virtues. Human 
in its mechanism, it has been human in its infirmities. In the doc- 
trine of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, which 
are the essential principles of Christianity, lies the redemption of 
mankind. — Ccesar's Column. 

Where Did the Gravel Come From ? But, says another : 
" The idea of a comet encountering the earth, and covering it with 
debris, is so stupendous, so out of the usual course of nature, I refuse 
to accept it." Ah, my friend, you forget that those Drift deposits, 
hundreds of feet in thickness, are there. They are out of the usual 



138 DONNELLIANA > 

course of nature. It is adaiitted that they came suddenly from some 
source* If you reject my theory, you do not get clear of the phe- 
nomena. The facts are a good deal more stupendous than the 
theory. Go out and look at the first Drift deposit ; dig into it a 
hundred feet or more ; follow it for a few hundred miles or more ; 
then come back, and scratch your head, and tell me where it all came 
from ! Calculate how many cart-loads there are of it, then multiply 
this by the area of your own continent, and multiply that again by 
the area of two or three more continents, and then again tell me 
where it came from ! — Ragnarok. 

The Koadside Spring. The day was hot. I grew thirsty. I 
remembered that by the roadside, a short distance ahead, there was 
a woodland spring trickling out of the rocks, and falling into a pool 
of crystal clearness and beauty. Many a time, when a boy, hunting 
through these forests, had I plunged my face, rosy^with youth and 
health, into the fountain, and drunk my full of the delightful liquid. 
Later in life I had rested by the refreshing pool, and philosophized 
upon the goodness of God, whose hand had fashioned these threads 
of living waters, creeping among the close-packed rocks, and 
through earth aud gravel, and bursting forth at last, pellucid and 
beautiful, for the good of His creatures. And I could not help but 
compare it to a pure hniman soul, passing through all the pressing 
insistance of multitudinous sins, aud coming forth at last without 
a stain or discoloration upon its bright surface — a thing of the 
earth, yet earthless. — Doctor Huguet 

THE WESTERN FARMER'S HOME MARKET. 

When I sell my wheat to the millers, for seventy-five cents per 
bushel, I cannot tell — and they cannot tell — whether the flour that 
is manufactured from it goes eventually into the stomachs of Amer- 
icans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hindoos or Hottentots. 
In fact, it don't make a cent's worth of difference to me where it 
goes. I would have some faith in your talk about a home-market if 
the mills and elevators put up signs like this : 

Price of No. 1 wheat, to be eaten by Yankees, one dollar per 
bushel. 

Price of No. 1 wheat, to be eaten by the blasted Enghshmeii; 
seventy-five cents per buphel. 



Ji:XTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 131' 

" But (ioii't you see, " says brother Jonathan, " you are sure that 
if the workmen who make your goods Uve in America they will buy 
your wheat, while the Englishmen mfty buy their wheat elsewhere.'' 

" What difiference, " you reply, " does that make to me if the 
price is the world's price and is fixed by the supply of wheat in the 
whole world? I can get no more than the world's price anyhow ; 
and that I will get anyhow. " — Speech at Glencoe, 1SS4. 

MiSEEY AND Injustice. If the web of the cloth is knotted in 
one place it is because the threads have, in an unmeaning tangle, 
been withdrawn from another part. Human misery is the correla^ 
five and equivalent of injustice somewhere else in society. — Ccesar^s 
Column. 

THE GREAT RAINS OF THE DRIFT AGE. 

" But," says one, " how long did all this take ? " 

Who shall say ? It may have been days, weeks, months, years, 
centuries. The Toltec legends say that their ancestors wandered 
for more than a hundred years in the darkness. 

The torrent-torn face of the earth ; the vast rearrangement of 
the drift materials by rivers, compared with which our own rivers are 
rills ; the vast continental regions which were evidently flooded, all 
testify to an extraordinary amount of moisture, first raised up from 
the seas and then cast down on the lands. Given heat enough to 
raise this mass, given the cold caused by its evaporation, given the 
time necessary for the great battle between this heat and this con- 
densation, given the time to restore this body of water to the ocean, 
not once but many times — for, along the southern border of the 
floods, where Muspelheim and Niflheim met, the heat must have 
sucked up the water as fast almost as it fell, to fall again, and again 
to be lifted up, until the heat-area was driven back and water fell, 
at last, everywhere on the earth's face, and the extraordinary evap- 
oration ceased — this was a gigantic, long-continued battle. — 
Magnarok. 

The Bar Sinister. Through the trees I watched the slowly 
receding figure, with the thoughtful pose of the head, thinking, 
thinking of my dreadful story; and a great pity went out from my 
heart toward that fair sufferer; fair and beautiful and yet pro- 
scribed ; alone, facing a hostile world. And yet, so strong is the 



140 bONNELLlAKA. 

power of prejudice, I felt, even while I pitied her, that I could not 
have married her — no, not if Mary did not exist. Beauty of mind, 
beauty of soul, exquisite beauty of body, such as fires the hearts of 
men and sets their brains throbbing passionately, all this she had ; 
everything to make the life of man sunshine and his home paradise, 
and yet across the golden image of all this perfection ran diagonally 
that thin, dark bar sinister; and prejudice stood up and pointed at it, 
and hissed its scorn, and all the furies of society, with blazing eyes, 
denounced it. Oh, strange, sad world, where a thought of the 
mind has such power to undo all the works and merits of nature ! — 
Doctor Huguet. 

The Univeksal Eeroes. The universality of an error proves 
nothing, except that the error is universal. The voice of the people 
is only the voice of God in the last analysis. We can safely appeal 
from Caiaphas and Pilate to Time. — Ragnarok. 

The Pov^ee of the Kaileoads. If it is right to buy up all 
the mines of coal in a State, and drive all the retail coal merchants 
out of business, why would it not be equally right to buy up all the 
farms, raise all the wheat, ship it and sell it? And If railroad 
companies can borrow money in Europe with which to purchase all 
the coal lands, why may they not in a few years more borrow money 
enough to buy up all the wheat lands ? They compelled the owners 
of coal mines to sell out to them by discriminating against them in 
transportation. Why can they not do the same thing with the 
wheat-raisers ? It is true that for a time they may cheapen coal to 
the consumer by concentrating in their own hands the profits which 
formerly supported hundreds of families and thousands of human 
beings. But when they have established a monopoly of the mines, 
the transportation and the retail trade, is it not in the nature of 
things that they will put up the price ? And what remedy have the 
people? They are powerless in their hands. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 

The Beotheehood of Justice. " What the world needs is a 
new organization — a great world-wide Brotherhood of Justice. It 
should be composed of all men who desire to lift up the oppressed 
and save civilization and society. It should work through govern- 
mental instrumentalities. Its altars should be the schools and the 
ballot-boxes. It should combine the good, who are not yet, I hope, 
in a minority, against the wicked. It should take one wrong after 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTiaNS, 141 

another,, concentrate the battle of the world upon them, and wipe 
them out of existence. It should be sworn to a perpetual crusade 
against every evil. It is not enough to heal the wounds caused by 
the talons of the wild beasts of injustice; it should pursue them to 
their bone-huddled dens and slay them. It should labor not alone 
to reheve starvation, but to make starvation impossible; — to kill it 
in its causes.— Cessans Column. 

The Antiquity of Civilization. I hold it to be incontesta- 
ble that, in some region of the earth, primitive mankind must have 
existed during vast spaces of time, and under most favorable cir- 
cumstances, to create, invent and discover those arts and things 
which constitute civilization. When we have it before our eyes that 
for six thousand years mankind in Europe, Asia and Africa, even 
when led by great nations, and illuminated by marvelous minds, did 
not advance one inch beyond the arts of Egypt, we may conceive what 
lapses, what ceojis of time it must have required to bring savage 
man to that condition of refinement and civilization possessed by 
Egypt when it first comes within the purview of hi&tovy.— Atlantis. 

Weakness Provokes Oppression. There never was an ass yet 
but there stood one ready to load ^[lmx.—■ Journal, 1883. 

A HIGH TARIFF EXPLAINED. 

Let me suppose the case : 

When you have sold a load of wheat that ought to be worth $1 
per bushel for 75 cents per bushel, you take your money to buy 
necessary articles, such as clothes, tools, nails, glass, lumber, salt, 
coal, or anything else you may need. You go to an Englishman, or 
a Frenchman, or a German, and he offers you the articles you want 
at reasonable prices, and you are about to deal with him, when the 
government, your own government which your own vote sustains, 
and for which, perhaps, you formerly shed your blood, steps up and 
says : 

" Hold on, my friend, you cannot buy these good of this French- 
man, Englishman or German. As a free American you can only 
buy of another free American-^ these men are fenced out. " 

" Well," you say, " that sounds patriotic. I think more of an 
American than I do of these foreigners; I love the old flag," etc., 
etc. 



142 DONNELLIANA. 

And so you go to the American and you say : 

" My friend, I prefer to deal with you. I have come to give you 
my custom. Let us look over your goods. " 

You pick out the same kind of articles the foreigner had offered 
you, and you lay down the same price he asked you. 

Your American brother says : 

" That won't do, my friend; I want more. That article you offer 
me $5 for I want $7.50 for; that other you offer me $18 for I ask $25 
for; that other you offer me $20 for I want $40 for." 

" Whew !" you say, " what is the meaning of that?" 

" Why," repUes Brother Jonathan, " you see I am protected and 
encouraged." 

" How protected and encouraged?" 

" I am protected against selling my goods to you at low prices, by 
preventing you from buying at low prices from yonder Englishman, 
Frenchman or German ; and I am encouraged at your expense by 
compelling you to pay me $7.50 for that $5 article, $25 for that $18 
article, and $40 for that $20 article. And a very substantial kind of 
encouragement you will admit that it is. On the trade you pro- 
pose, to the amount of $33, you will pay me $29.50 for the privilege 
of hving under the freest and best government in the world." 

" But see here," you say, '' the millers stole one-quarter of my 
crop, and now you propose to steal one-half of what is left ! I am 
a patriot, but that is paying too high a price for patriotism. If this 
thing keeps on I will land in the poor-house." 

" Very hkely, my friend, " replies Brother Jonathan. " I have 
no immediate interest in your future condition. American industry 
must be ^ encouraged ' and ' protected ' against the pauper labor of 
Europe." 

'' Blood and thunder ! " you reply, '^ am not I an American ? Do 
1 not labor in raising my crops? And who protects me against the 
pauper labor of Europe ? I have to sell my wheat at the world's 
price, less the Minneapolis stealage; that price is fixed in Liverpool, 
and there my wheat meets with the competition of the wheat raised 
by the poorest peasants in Europe, viz.: the wheat of Eussia, Poland 
and Hungary ; yes, even with the wheat raised by the half-clad, 
dark-skinned natives of India. Wlio protects me? How am I to 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 143 

get back that $29.50 you propose to now take from me?"— ^S^eec/? at 
Glencoe, 1S84. 

A Sonnet. 

To Miss , %vhose favorite study is Astronomy. 

Ah! soft-haired maiden, with the beaming eye 

That plays in wild, that thinks in sober graces; 
Why must thou make the human heart thy sky, 

And read men's star-thoughts in their very faces? 
Why, with that truly telescopic smile, 

So soft and sad, so witching and so winning, 
Dost thou enlarge the nebulae of guile. 

And set tbe planet-wishes all a-sinning ? 
Thou Herschel of sweet womanhood ! when over 

The milky way of mankind, fond and fervent, 
Thou rang'st thy glass, say, wilt thou please discover 

And take a survey of thy " humble servant " ? 
And, be assured, if worth in him thou'lt find. 
That heretofore the whole world has been blind. 

— January, 1850. 

THE VISION OF THE HANDS. 

Around the face there seemed to be a dark, moving mass, 
in great, and, apparently, endless circles. The pulsating light 
from the hair beat over it, but it was some time before I could 
discern what it was. To my extreme astonishment I at last 
perceived that it was made up of miUions of dark hands, all 
clasped in the attitude of prayer, and all directed toward the 
Christ. Something within me told me that they were the sup- 
plicating hands of negroes. They were all sizes and shades of 
darkness, from ebon black to those no browner than the hands 
of the peasants of southern Europe. There were the plump hands of 
children, the tapering hands of women, the coarse, rude hands of 
workmen, seamed and calloused with toil ; the gnarled and knotted 
hands of decrepid old men and feeble women. All were bent ap- 
pealingly toward the central figure, and they moved with a continual 
movement, as if they sought to reach and touch Him. The walls of 
the room afforded no limit to the sight — it was an unive^^se of hanfU\ 
shading" off into iiifinitv. 



144: DONNELLIANA. 

The great, slowly-moving eyes regarded me again with a look of 
melancholy reproach, and then swept that vast circle of piteous ap- 
peal. Two bright tears flowed slowly down the fair face ; the lips 
parted, and in a voice sweeter than the sound of rippling waters, 
the vision spake : " These, too, aee my children. For them, 
ALSO, I DIED o^ the CROSS !"— Docfor Hiiguet. 

Grass. Grass, the green hair of the earth. — Journal, 1884. 

THE BURNING OF MOTHER BINDELL'S. 

The besieged have the advantage : they are sheltered and in the 
darkness; while their assailants are almost unprotected, and 
exposed, in the white glare of the full moon, to be picked off by the 
skilled marksmen, who do not waste a shot. Several of the attack- 
ing party are killed and many wounded. They are having the 
worst of it. But still the fight goes on. A half hour passes — a 
half hour of terrible battle. 

Dr. Magruder and Berrisford are with those who are keeping 
watch over the back part of the building. They are sheltering 
themselves behind the old barn and firing as opportunity presents 
itself. 

And now a singular thing happens. 

The Doctor notices a smell of burning hay. Men's senses are 
acute at such a time. The wall of the old barn is full of cracks 
and crevices. He peers through one of them. There is a light 
within the barn. 

" Berrisford," he said softly, " come here. What do you see? " 

" Hush! " whispered Berrisford, " it is white! " And a super- 
stitious thrill ran through him. 

"It is a woman," said the Doctor; "I see her more clearly 
now, through the smoke." 

'^ What is she doing? " whispered Berrisford. 

" She has kindled a fire in the barn, and now she is tying a rope 
around a great mass of hay. " 

" By heavens," said Berrisford, as the flames flashed up ; " she 
has stuck a pitchfork through it, she lights it, she lifts it up, she 
rushes toward the door. It is Ahigail! " 

The Doctor sprang forward to save her at the risk, of his own life. 
He was too late, Out through the open doorway, right toward the 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 14") 

lioiise, across the hell of flying bullets, into the very jaws of death, 
she ran swiftly, bearing the great blazing, roaring mass, high abo^ e 
her head, like a banner. 

'' She means to fire the house, " said Berrisford. 

Yes, stntiglit to the back door she ran, and flung down her biu^n- 
iug burden against it. And then she started to walk back, as calmly, 
as unconcernedly, as if she had been upon a quiet country road near 
her own home. But she had proceeded but a few paces when the 
fire of the defenders of the house, who well understood what she 
had done, Avas concentrated upon her, and she staggered and fell 
backward — dead, with a smile of triumph upon her face. 

And the door flew open, and a gray-haired woman, with blazing 
eyes and harpy hands, rushed out, and tried to scatter and stamp 
the burning hay. A dozen rifles cracked, and she fell headlong 
among the roaring flames, which leaped and danced and roared 
above her —exulting over her as a thing fit only to be utterly an- 
nihilated. Door, wall, window, cornice, everything is now aflame, 
and the fire demon grasps and gnaws and devoui-s, until the whole 
house is lashed in its red and mighty arms; and every board — 
reeking with years of sin and shame — is sucked into the vortex 
of the horrible destruction. 

And now, dimly through the smoke, begrimed and bloody figures 
dart suddenly out, as if to escape. But they cross not the dreadful 
circle around^the conflagration. Here and there, illy-defined heaps, 
casting black shadows in the glare, lie upon the ground, moveless. 
Lives they once were, loved by mothers ; now they are dust-heaps. 
And, like an evil spirit, that exhausts itself and can do no further 
harm to man, the conflagration pauses; but it casts down, ere it stops, 
walls and timbers, and rafters and roof into the red furnace of the 
cellar, where the coals glow portentously — like a veritable hell — 
where stood so long that house of hell. — Doctor Huguet. 

Unequal Distribution. One hundred millions of dollars in 
one house represents " short commons " in ten thousand houses.^ 
Journal, 1884. 

The Retort Courteous. Where is Perrine, who said we 
lacked the mathematical faculty, and could not tell what two vind 
two made? Perhaps so. But we know that two like himself and 
two like Bill Todd would make four of the biggest fools in Christen- 



146 BONNELLIANA. 

dom. How many fools they would make in the due course of nature 
we shall not appall the world by attempting to calculate. — The 
Anti-Monopolist. 

The Superstition of Metallic Money. Here, to-day, in 
America, men are starving and cutting their throats, and a whole 
country is ruined, trying to force the business of the people to ac- 
commodate itself to the supply of a yellow metal, because Agamem- 
non and Artaxerxes recognized it as money ; and in the midst of 
their tribulations a war breaks out five thousand miles distant, and 
presto, your carefully coined gold is shipped out by the million, and 
the cutting of throats proceeds. The whole thing is fallacy and folly . 
What is wealth? That which supplies the wants of man, food, 
raiment, tools, weapons, herds, lauds, fuel, etc. These wants are 
perpetual and universal. Gold and silver are valuable only because, 
by Imv, they are interchangeable for these things ; repeal the law 
and the Pioneer-Press admits that they would degenerate into pots 
and pans, into '^ vessels of honor and dishonor." And yet society 
has got itself into such shape that the men who produce those 
things which supply the universal wants of man are, as a rule, poor; 
while the fellows who hold the pot-metal are masters of the world. 
— The Anti-Monopolist. 

The Spirit World. There are creatures in space who look 
upon our intelligences, even at their highest, with very much the- 
same pity with which we contemplate the minds of cows. — Journal, 
1891. 

The Worst Selfishness. " Selfishness is the one great cause of 
pohtical decay. It is an element of destruction wherever it intrudes 
itself." — Corning Independent. 

And that selfishness which ignores the rights of the great mass 
of the people, the laboring classes, is the blindest and most destruct- 
ive selfishness in the world. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Hui^AN Automata. In a primitive people the mind of one 
generation precisely repeats the minds of all former generations; the 
construction of the intellectual nature varies no more, from age to 
agf, than the form of the body or the color of the skin ; the gener- 
adons feel the same emotions, and think the same thoughts, and use 
the same expressions. And this is to be expected, for the brain is 



KXTIiACTS AND SELECTIONS. 147 

as much a part of the inheritable, material organization as the color 
of the eyes or the shape of the nose. 

The minds of men move automatically ; no man thinks because 
he intends to think ; ho thinks, as he hungers and thirsts, under a 
great primal necessity ; his thoughts come out from the inner depths 
of his being as the tiower is developed by forces rising through the 
roots of the ^Ismt.—Bagnarok. 

THE CAUSE OF HARD TIMES. 

Now, good reader, we will suppose that you are taken suddenly 
and seriously sick, and you send for a quack to prescribe for you. 
The first question he asks you is: "Were you quite well last 
weekf " " Very well," you reply. " You felt buoyant, happy and 
hearty?" he asks. "Exceedingly so," you reply. "Just as I 
thought," says Mr. Quack; "your good health last week was the 
cause of your sickness. There never was a case of sickness yet that 
was not preceded by a condition of good health. It is the health 
that makes men sick. " And he prescribes a medicine that will keep 
you sick. 

So the quack of the Journal declares that hard times have in- 
variably followed periods of abundant, or, as he calls it, " inflated " 
currency. He fails tD tell you that those periods of inflated currency 
were periods of great growth^ development and prosperity, and that 
disaster followed when it was attempted to reduce all this growth, 
development and prosperity to the meager measure of the quantity 
of gold and silver in circulation. The Irishman said " it was not the 
fall that hurt him, it was stopping so quick. " It was not the paper 
money that produced collapse ; it was the attempt to make one dol- 
lar of gold redeem three dollars of paper. " Specie payment " has 
l)een the parent of the world's great crises.— Anti-Monopolist. 

Ax Aphorism. All now recognized truths once rested, sohtary 
and alone, in some one brain. — Bagnarok. 

The Power of the Dollar. The purchasing power of the 
dollar has been so increased that it is an equivalent for more wheat. 
Hence the cheapness of wheat in the face of a foreign war and short 
crops in Europe I The price of wheat shrinks, but the mortgage on 
the farm does not. Property of all kinds is worth less; money is 
worth more. We are burning the candle at both endS; and the 



148 DONNELLIANA. 

flames are drawing uncomfortably close to the voter's fingers. Has 
the voter sense enough to blow out the candle 'i — The Anti-Monopolist. 
The Causes of Ixeidelity in the Age of Elizabeth. The 
" malignity of sects " drove many men to infidelity. They saw in 
religion only monstrous and cruel forces, which lighted horrible fires 
in the midst of great cities, and filled the air with the stench of burn- 
ing flesh and the shrieks of the dying victims. They held rehgiou 
accountable for these excesses of fanaticism in a semi -barbarous age, 
and they doubted the existence of a God who could permit such hor- 
rors. They were ready to exclaim with Macduff, when told that 
'' the hell-kite/' Macbeth, had killed all his family, " all his pretty 
ones, '' at one fell swoop : 

" Did heaven look on. 
And would not take their part ? 

They came to conceive of G-od as a cruel monster who relished 
the sufferings of his creatures. Shakespeare puts this thought into 
the mouth of Lear : 

*' As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods ; 
They kill us for their sport. " 

— The Great Gryptogrcun. 

Minnesota's Coat of Aems. Dakota County records 492 
births and 182 deaths during the year 1876. Compare that with 
New York, where the deaths were six thousand more than the 
births ! We argued long ago that the coat of arms of Minne- 
sota ought to be a double-barreled cradle with twins in it. But 
perhaps that alarmed Indian who, in our State seal, is rushing 
wildly toward the setting sun, is simply getting out of the way 
of the on-coming rush of the white man's papooses. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

Choking the Volcano. There are but two forms of govern- 
ment in the world: injustice, armed and powerful, and taking 
to itself the shape of king or aristocracy ; and, on the other hand, 
absolute human justice, resting upon the broad and enduring basis 
of equal rights to all. Give this, and give intelligence and educa- 
tion to understand it, and you have a structure which will stand 
while the world stands. Anything else than this is mere repres- 
sion, the jpiling of rocks into the mouth of the volcano, which 



£XTIiACTS JA'i) SELECTIONS. 14g 

Ta"lsT ""' "'"' "'^'" *" '""^ ^^-SpeeckinConorcss, 

Tkue Statesmanship, a true statesman is oue who adaots 
righteousness to circumstances, as the Swiss peasant builds hs 

equalities of the mountam. He could not erect a symmetrical 
Greek temple upon the face of the precipice, but he s™ an 
humble home, where love and peace may find shelter n the mid'" 
of Alpme tempest .-Hoctor Huguet. 

Music. 
Showering music on the full-eared night, 
Until the soul sits listening. _ 1850 

cKdtarf""' °':'^ "'^"' '''''^ """''l -" '^<^ '-'i und r' heTron 
clad tax-law ; and you would have to join the Anti-Drive- Well Asso 
cation, or pay $10 royalty on the hole.-r*e AnU.MoL7<^Ilt 

Evening. 
Sweetest hour of changing heaven, 
% So^i' «f briglit and beauteous even; 

When the happy day-god goes 
To a conscience-calm repose ; 
And the stars hke guards are blent 
Round the dim night's dusky tent ; 
And the moon, a mourner fair, 
Guards the heedless sleeper there. 

—The Mourner's Vision, 1850, 
What One Man Can Do. One man can do much. Look at • 
the history of the anti-slavery movement. In 1783 six obscm^ 
Quakers met m London and organized the first society which in aU 
the history of mankind, had been created to protest aSst the 

Z Lo thM f ^ '°^"'"'' '''''''' ship-owners for throw- 
^ng into the sea and drowning one hundred and thirty-two 



150 nON^ELLlANA. 

Africans, Ijy the master of a slave-ship, to defraud the underwriters. 
No penalty was inflicted; because they were slaves! And yet^ in 
twenty-four years, the movement, inaugurated by the six Quakers, 
had grown so strong — in the consciences and souls of men — that a 
bill passed Parhament to abolish the slave trade ; in twenty-three 
years more every Christian nation in Europe and America had pro- 
hibited the commerce in human beings, and in thirty-five' years 
more slavery itself had ceased to exist in nearly every country on 
earth. — Doctor Huguet. 

Caves. Caves were the first shelters of uncivihzed men. It 
was not necessary to fly to the caves through the rain of falhng 
debris; many were doubtless already in them when the great world- 
storm broke, and others naturally sought their usual dwelling- 
places. 

Man is born of the earth; he is made of the clay; like Adam, 
created — 

" Of good red clay, 
Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep 
Of the black eagle's wing." 

The cave-temples of India — the oldest temples, probably, on 
earth — are a reminiscence of this cave-life. 

We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters " dwelt in a 
cave; " and we shall find Job hidden away in the '' narrow-mouthed, 
bottomless " pit or cave. — RagnaroJc. 

The Future of Laboe. Our masters have educated us to 
understand that we have no interest in civilization or society. We 
are its victims, not its members. They depend on repression, on 
force alone ; on cruelty, starvation, to hold us down until we work 
our lives away. Our lives are all tve have; it may be all we will 
ever have. They are as dear to us as existence is to the millionaire. 
— Ccesar^s Column. 

The Objects oe the Book '^ Atlantis. " If these propo- 
sitions can be proved, they will solve many problems which now 
perplex mankind; they will confirm in many respects the statements 
in the opening chapters of Genesis ; they will widen the area of 
human history; they will explain the remarkable resemblances 
which exist between the ancient civilizations found upon the 
opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, in the old and new worlds; 



KXTl^ACtS AM) SELKCriON^. 151 

iuid they will aid us to rehabilitate the fathers of our civilization, 
our blood; and our fundamental ideas — the men wlio lived, loved 
and labored ages before the Aryans descended upon India, or the 
Phoenician had settled in Syria, or the Goth had reached the shores 
of the Baltic. — A tlantis. 

LINES 

To my dear friend John T. Grehie, of Pldladelphia, Cadet at West Point, Jamiary 

15th, 1851. 
(J^iieutenant Greblc was killed at the battle of Big Bethel, Ya., June 10, 1861. 
He was "the first officer of the regular army who perished iu the war for the sup- 
pression of the rebellion." The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, said: " Hia 
distinguished character, his gallant conduct on the field where he fell, and his 
devoted sacrifice to the cause of his country, will make his name and memory 
illustrious."] 

Look forward to the future, for thy heritage is there, 
Where our country's starry banner floats alone upon the air ; 
Or, through the smoke of battle, its smoke-enveloped form. 
Gleams like a white sail plunging 'raid the tossing of the storm. 

Look forward to the future, for our nation's dawn is nigh, 

And her struggling hght is glancing whei-e the golden deserts lie. 

The sun that peeped above the sea on Plymouth's wintry shore 

Now flashes where the billows of the wide Pacific roar; 

And up along the icy north his slanted beams lie white 

O'er pallid lake, and windy plain, and frozen forest height ; 

And down amid the dim green woods of shadowy Brazil 

His golden light shall dazzle where all is dark and still. 

Look forward to the future, when worth shall find its own. 

And when the mightiest mind shall wield the monarch-might alone, 

When nobler deeds and greater thoughts shall light our nation's 

home 
Than ever blessed the Spartan's hills or shook the halls of Rome. 
Then thou shalt shine, my iarly friend; thy dimly rising star 
Shall kiss the sunken waves of peace or light the waste of war ; 
And we shall stand aside and watch its steady, changeless ray, 
Until its light fades faintly out in fame's eternal day. 

The Contests of Races. ''Remember this is a race conflict, 
and the contentions of races with one another are always more bitter 
than the battles of rival religions ; for every physical attribute which 



152 DONNELLIANA. 

separates the combataDts accentuates the ferocity of the struggle. 
In a battle of the birds and beasts only the bats, hideous, 
misshapen creatures, can be indifferent. One must go, right or wrong, 
with his class." — Doctor Huguet. 

THE DRIFT NOT DUE TO ICE ACTION. 

Here, then, in conclusion, are the evidences that the deposits of 
the Drift are not due to continental ice-sheets: 

1. The present ice-sheets of the remote north create no such 
deposits and make no such markings. 

2. A vast continental elevation of land-surfaces at the north 
Was necessary for the ice to slide down, and this did not exist. 

3. The ice-sheet, if it made the Drift markings, must have 
scored the rocks going up-hill, while it did not score them going 
down-hill. 

4. If the cold formed the ice and the ice formed the Drift, why 
is there no Drift in the coldest regions of the earth, where there 
must have been ice ? 

5. Continental ice-belts, reaching to 40° of latitude, would have 
exterminated all tropical vegetation. It was not exterminated, 
therefore such ice-sheets could not have existed. 

6. The Drift is found in the equatorial regions of the world. If 
it was produced by an ice-sheet in those regions, all pre-glacial 
forms of life must have perished; but they did not perish; therefore 
the ice-sheet could not have covered these regions, and could not 
have produced the drift-deposits there found. 

In brief, the Drift is not found where ice must have been, and is 
found where ice could not have been; the conclusion, therefore, is 
irresistil^le that the Drift is not due to ice. — Bagnarok. 

A Brother of the Mud-puddle. We might add a man is what 
he thinlis. Physiologically he is but a bag of microbe-infested 
iluids, held in shape by a skeleton ; and Ijut for the light in his brain 
a brother of the mud-puddle. It is the thought faculty that is di- 
vine. In this he is made in the image of God. When he thinks, 
the same processes are at work that made the stars. What higher 
function is there than to feed and trim this burning flame of the 
soul, and help men to arrive at just conclusions? — Address to the 
Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 



J^JXTHACny AND SELECTIONS. \:^:\ 

Fate. But what arewei? The creatures of late; the victims 
of circumstances. We luok upon the Medusa-head of destiny, witli 
its serpent curls, and our wills, if not our souls, are turned into 
stone. God alone, who knows all, can judge the heart of man. — 
Ccesafs Column. 

Death. Death — going down the pitiful steps of depression to 
darkness and dust. — Journal, 18S3. 

The Comet Striking the Earth. But suppose two heavenly 
bodies, each with its own center of attraction, each holding its own 
scattered materials in place by its own force, to meet each other; 
then there is no more probability of the stones and dust of the 
comet flying to the earth, than there is of the stones and dust of the 
earth flying to the comet. And the attractive power of the comet, 
great? enough to hold its gigantic mass in place through the long 
reaches of the fields of space, and even close up to the burning eye 
of the awful sun itself, holds its dust and pebbles and bowlders 
together until the very moment of impact with the earth. In short, 
thej^, the dust and stones, do not continue to follow the comet, be- 
cause the earth has got in their way and arrested them. It was this 
terrific force of the comet's attraction, represented in a fearful rate 
of motion, that tore and pounded and scratched and furrowed our 
poor earth's face, as shown in the crushed and striated rocks under 
the Drift. They would have gone clean through the earth to follow 
the comet, if it had been possible. — Bagnarok. 

Observation and Experiment. Life, to the wise man, is, a 
series of observations and experiments to find what will best con- 
serve the inherited vitality. The small flame, in the hand of in- 
telligence, carefully shielded, will outlive the tempest which blows 
out the uncovered, flaring torches of the roysterers. — Journal, 1891. 

Half Prose and Half Poetry. All through the essay it 
seems to be more than prose : from beginning to end it is a mass of 
imagery; it is poetry without rhythm. Like a great bird which, as 
it starts to fly, runs for a space along the ground, beating the air 
with its wings and the earth with its feet; so in this essay we seem 
to see the pinions of the poet constantly striving to lift him above 
the barren limitations of prose into the blue ether of untrammeled 
expression. — The Great Crifptogram. 



HOW CAPITAL CONTROLS THE LABOR VOTE; 

" Do you mean to tell me that this cunning, crafty, long-headed 
white race, that has dominated every darker people it has come in 
contact with, is unable to control a horde of ignorant black men 
without butchering them? How do they control their own people? 
Look at the vast populations of laboring men in the cities of the 
North. They have the ballot; they are united by a sense of real or 
fancied wrongs; they enthusiastically resolve every year to take the 
government into their own hands; they are the vast majority. Did 
you ever hear of the bankers and brokers and lawyers shooting 
them down at the polls? Not a bit of it. And yet the professional 
classes and the corporations, comparatively insignificant in number, 
always rule the cities and the States. How do they doit? They 
divide up the laborers. They buy up their leaders. They set them 
to battling on other issues. They adopt what the philosophers call 
^the expulsivie power of a new affection.' They bewilder and befud- 
dle them, and govern them. They establish newspapers among 
them •to direct them; and they take possession of them, very much 
as the negroes of Africa capture monkeys. They leave beer for 
them to drink, and when the quadrumanous little fools are pretty 
well overcome by intoxication, a negro steps forward and takes 
the leader by the hand. The imitative creatures follow this exam- 
ple, and all clasp hands in the same way, and the colored gentle- 
man leads them all off, in a long hue, happy and contented, to 
captivity. If the South desires to control its labor vote, it should 
take example from the astute North, where politics are reduced to a 
science. But firing bullets into their lungs and stomachs and 
hearts! Pah! that is brutal and barbarous, and marks an unde- 
veloped state of society. In fact, force is always the remedy of men 
who cannot reason. You kill a man because nature has not given 
you brains enough to convince him. " — Doctor Huguet. 

The Value of Civilization. What is civilization worth 
which means happiness for a few thousand men and inexpressible 
misery for hundreds of millions? — Ccesar^s Column. 

'' Another of Mr. W 's manifest derelictions of public duty 

was in his failure to include Mr. Donnelly's celebrated project for the 
improvement of the navigation of the Zumbro and Cannon rivers, 
in his scheme of national water routes." — St. Paul Press. 



EXTRACT^i AND SELECTIONS. loj 

Easily explained, Joseph. 1st. These, rivers are in Minnesota. 
'Jd. There is no steal in them. Improving- Minnesota rivers is not 

W 's forte. His best hold is steamship lines to China, with a 

twenty years' subsidy of $1,000,000 per year. Those are the things 
to help Llinnesota. Every farmer who wants to ship tea to China 
is benefited thereby ; every farmer who proposes to " diversify his 
industry'' by raising bamboo poles has an interest in that subsidy. 
— Anti-Monopolist. 

The Effect of Civilizatiox on Legends. Legend has one 
great foe to its perpetuation — civilization. Civilization brings with 
it a contempt for everything which it can not understand; skepti- 
cism becomes the synonym for intelligence ; men no longer repeat ; 
they doubt; they dissect; they sneer; they reject; they invent. 
If the mytli survives this treatment, the poets take it up and make 
it their stock in trade : they decorate it in a masquerade of frip- 
pery and finery, feathers and furbelows, like a clown dressed for a 
fancy ball; and the poor barbarian legend survives at last, if it 
survives at all, like the Conflagration in Ovid or King Arthur in 
Tennyson — a hippopotamus smothered in flowers, jewels and laces. 
Hence we find the legends of the primitive American Indians ad- 
hering quite closely to the events of the past, while the myths that 
survive at all among the civilized nations of Europe are found in 
garbled forms, and only among the peasantry of remote districts. 
— Bagnarok. 

The New Issues. The old issues concerned black men ; the 
new issues concern white men. Slavery robbed of the fruits of 
their industry a people living a thousand miles away ; the corpora- 
tions, the manufacturers, the monopolists, are stealing the fruits of 
our otvn industry. In the great war we fought for our brethren ; 
now we must fight for ourselves. Then we battled with the cart- 
ridge-box; now we must fight with the ballot-box. — Speech to 
Grangers, 1873. 

The American Flag. There are stars upon it : they are stars 
for the hopes of the world. There are stripes upon it : they are 
stripes for the oppressors of mankind. — Speech at the Labor Kir- 
mess, Minneapolis, May, 1887. 

The Producers. " Our labor creates everything; we possess 
nothing. Yes, we have the scanty supply of food necessary to ena- 



1 56 T) ON NE Lit A KA . ' 

ble us to create more. We have ceased to be men — we are iuu- 
chines. Did God die for a machine? Certainly not." — Ccesafs 
Column. 

THE MISEKIES OF OUR FRONTIER POPULATION. 

On the other hand, it is not given to the mind of man to con- 
ceive, or the tongue of man to utter, the silent, pitiful, awful strug- 
gles that are being endured among our frontier population, to ena- 
ble these creatures to adorn their wretched bodies in the glittering 
spoils of Golconda, and revel and riot in wasteful splendor. It is a 
silent struggle, for these pioneers belong to strong races; they rep- 
resent the American, the Irish, the German, the Scandinavian, the 
English, the Scotch, the French races ; and, like the Spartan boy, 
they will not cry out, but prefer to die and give no sign, even 
though the serpent is gnawing at their hearts. 

But every now and then we read in the newspapers some little 
incident which throw^s a whole flood of light on the scene, like that, 
for instance, of the poor Nelson family, who, last winter, perished 
in the Red River valley; father and two daughters, caught in a 
blizzard, carrying hay to burn, freezing to death between the hay- 
stack and their wretched, smoke-blackened home. Those stajk, 
stiff and half-clad bodies should have been carried into Minneapolis 
and laid down, side by side, on the platform of the mills, that the 
public eye might be relieved of the monotony of diamonds, and 
French bronzes and Louis XIV. clocks, and fast horses, and faster 
women. 

For one, my friends, I would rather live on a forty-acre farm, on 
a diet of water and potatoes, than possess all the luxuries that life 
can give, obtained at the cost of so much misery and suffering to 
my fellow-men. ^^ It is not and it cannot come to good." — Speech at 
Glencoe, 1884. 

■ That's the Questio:n". A poor editor, being asked if he ever 
thought what he would do if he had Vanderbilt's income, replied : 
'' No; but I have often wondered w^hat Vanderbilt would do if he 
had my income." — Journal, 1883. 

The Stomach. The stomach is your true civilizer. Abundance 
of food means density of population ; and this, in turn, means migra- 
tions, colonizations, inventions, industry, laws, all social regulations 



EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 157 

Napoleou said an army marched ou its belly; — meaDing that if it 
was not fed it could not fight. And so we may say that civilization 
moves ou its stomach. — Journal, 1883. 

An Aphorism. It is the old story of brains owning muscles all 
the world over. The men who refuse to do their own thinking will 
always be the serfs of the men who think for them. — Speech to 
Grangers^ 1873. 

PARTICIPATING IN THE PURPOSES OF GOD. 

" Granted, Major," I replied ; " granted that the white race is 
the masterful race of the globe ; and in the presence of their 
tremendous achievements no man — black, brown, red or yellow — 
can doubt it. They are the biggest-brained, the boldest-hearted, 
the most capable subdivision of mankind that has ever dwelt on the 
planet. I grant you all that. But are we to do justice only to our 
superiors, or our equals f If so, it yields us no honor, for our supe- 
riors and our equals are able to enforce justice from us. Generosity 
can only be exercised toward those less fortunate than ourselves. 
Power has no attribute grander than the god-like instinct to reach 
down and lift up the fallen. If we can plainly perceive in the prog- 
ress of humanity the movement of a great Benevolence, every 
year adding to the comfort and happiness of mankind, why should 
we not, to the extent of our little i)owers, aid Him in His tremen- 
dous work ? How divine a thought it is that we are participating 
in J:he purposes and work of the Almighty One ! That, as he has 
dragged man up from reptilian barbarism to this splendid, this 
august era of peace and love, we are able to help the flagging foot- 
steps of the laggards and stragglers who have dropped behind in 
God's great march. In such a work we become the very children of 
God — fired with his zeal, illuminated by his smile. How base and 
brutal it would be if we were willing to be fed with all the countless 
fruits of God's beneficence, and, in the midst of our full content, 
commend only poison to the lips of those whose sole ofi'ense is that 
Heaven has not given them our blessings I " — Doctor Huguet. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 

It is a sad state of things when the servants of the people become 
their masters ; when those selected to perform subordinate duties, 
for which they are well paid, band together to control the com- 



158 BONNELLIANA. 

munity, and perpetuate their own lease of office. It produces in the 
country a class of active, intelligent, cunning, selfish and reckless 
men, who, while others sleep, are plotting and scheming ; who stand 
ready, at all times, for their own base ends, to fan popular passions 
to white heat and array the people into two hostile camps, ready 
to drop their ballots and seize their rifles, and plunge all things into 
the gulf of civil war. 

Every man knows that eight years ago we were brought to the 
very brink of chaos by the struggles of the office-seekers ; and but 
for the patriotism and forbearance of that great statesman, Samuel 
J. Tilden, the streets of every city in the land would have run red 
with fraternal blood, and the republic have gone down in disgrace 
forever. 

And four years ago we saw one who was the worst type of the 
American office-seeker and professional politician, — Guiteau, — 
maddened by disappointment, and sharing in the passions of his 
faction, send down to darkness and dust, by the bullet of the assassin 
one of the broadest and brightest intellects the new world has ever 
produced. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Mason and Dixon's Line Blotted Out. This is now one 
nation. Armies of men perished to make it one nation. The abo- 
lition of slavery blotted out Mason and Dixon's line. There is no 
longer a South. The rebellion exists only in history; a history that 
testifies that the American people, North and South, have no peers 
on earth for courage, manhood, persistence and endurance. — 
Speech, 1885. 

MoDEKN Justice. Justice in the old time was painted blind- 
fold; she did not see the contending parties, but simply felt when 
the scale was rightly adjusted. Our modern justice is like the 
monkey, with his eyes wide open, who divided the cheese found by 
the two dogs, and who kept biting a piece alternately off each frag- 
ment, to make them balance, until there was nothing left for the 
astonished dogs. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

THE PLAY- WRITER IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

The reader can readily conceive that the man must, indeed, be 
exceedingly ambitious of fame who would insist on asserting his 
title to the authorship of plays acted in such theaters before such 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 159 

audiences. Imagine that aristocratic young gentleman, Francis 
Bacon, born in the palace, Tork Place; "put to all the learn- 
ing that his time could make him master of;" an attache of 
the English legation at the French court; the son of a Lord Chan- 
cellor; the nephew of a Lord Treasurer; the offspring of the virtu- 
ous and pious Lady Anne Bacon ; with his head full of great plans 
for the reformation of philosophy, law and government, and with 
his eyes fixed on the chair his father had occupied for twenty years — 
imagine him, I say, insisting that his name should appear on the 
play-bills as the poet who wrote Mucedoriis, Tamhurlane, The 
Jew of Malta, Titus Andronicus, Fair Em, Sir John OldcasiJe, or 
The Merry Devil of Edmonton ! Imagine the drunken, howling mob 
of Calibans hunting through Gray's Inn to find the son of the Lord 
Chancellor, in the midst of his noble friends, to flog him, or toss 
him in a blanket, because, forsooth, his last play had not pleased 
their royal fancies ! — The Great Cryptogram. 

THE GOSPEL OF DESTRUCTION. 

" Oh, my dear friend," I replied, " do not say so. Destruction! 
What is it? The wiping out of the slow accumulations made by 
man's intelligence during thousands of years. A world cataclysm. 
A day of judgment. A day of fire and ashes. A world burned 
and swept bare of life. All the flowers of art; the beautiful, gos- 
samer-like works of glorious literature; the sweet and lovely crea- 
tions of the souls of men long since perished, and now the in- 
estimable heritage of humanity; all, all crushed, torn, leveled in 
the dust. And all that is savage, brutal, cruel, demoniac in man's 
nature let loose to ravage the face of the world. Oh! horrible — 
most horrible! The mere thought works in me like a convulsion; 
wliat must the inexpressible reality be? To these poor, suffering, 
hopeless, degraded toilers; these children of oppression and the 
dust; these chained slaves, anything that will break open the gates 
of their prison-house would be welcome, even though it were an 
earthquake that destroyed the planet. But you and J, my dear 
friend, are educated to higher thoughts. We know the value of the 
precious boon of civilization. We know how bare and barren, and 
wretched and torpid, and utterly debased is soulless barbarism. " — 
Ccesafs Colunm. 



IGO BONNELLIANA. 

The Yeomanry. This nation needs more of such men. We 
must cherish the institutions which have produced them. Their 
price is richer than rubies. They are the salt of a nation. Some 
one said to Croesus^ when he showed him his treasures : " But if one 
should come along with more iron he would take all this gold. " 
The prosperity of a people rests upon its manhood; the gold can 
only repose upon the Iron. Without this a nation is but a con- 
glomerate of sordidness and sensuality — a mixture of clay and brass 
which must fall to pieces the moment a strong hand is laid upon it. 
— Speech in Congress , May 7, 1868. 

THE SONG OF THE ELF-QUEEN. 

Hither come from loam and foam; 

From the mountain eagle's nest; 

From the dark wave's curling crest; 

From the softly sleeping valley. 

Where the wandering breezes rally; 

From the white clouds hurrying past, 

Foam-like, on the streaming blast ; 

From the distant deep'ning sky, 

Mournful as a mother's eye, 

When her dearest droops to die ; 

From the surf- wave's shivering shock 

On the lonely ocean-rock, 

With the shelving billow falhng, 

And the sea-birds wailful calling. 

Gather, gather, spirits, gather, 

To this rocky hillock's heather; 

By the sadly sounding sea. 

Moaning everlastingly. 

Gather, spirits, unto me.— The Mourner's Vision, 1850. 

Life on a Southern Plantation. It was a yery bright and 
pleasant life— kindly and social and generous. No man was trying 
to outwit or plunder his fellow. The discussions of politics— apart 
from the natural local prejudices— were all conducted on a high 
plane: --the good of their section. There was, to be sure, a sort of 
half-expressed feeling that the South had been caught in an 
eddy of dead-water, full of the drift-wood of old opinions, far 



EKTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 101 

remote from that great, surging, swollen, i-apidly- advancing stream 
of the world. And yet they felt, too, that the stream was covered 
with the debris of selfishness, and its shores lined with cruel wreck- 
ers; and that its waters poured over the drowned caves of abysmal 
and multitudinous want; and that, in comparison with it all," their 
lives were honorable and sweet and iMWc— Doctor Iliiguet. 

Jefferson's Doctrine. We need statesmen who, above every- 
thing else, will love liberty because they love tlie human fVimily; 
who will resist wrong because it means wretchedness to mankind! 
We need a people high enough above prejudice to cordially and 
unitedly support such men. And we need a powerful political or- 
ganization, filled with the spirit of that magnificent utterance of 
Thomas Jeflerson: " I have sworn undying hostility, on the altar 
of my God, to every form of oppression of the bodies or the souls 
of men."— 6^eec/< at Glencoe, 1884. 

THE Ei^ISTENCE OF GOD. 

" Science has increased their knowledge one hundred per cent, 
and their vanity one thousand per cent. The more they know of 
the material world the less they can perceive the spiritual world 
around and within it. The acquisition of a few facts about nature 
has closed their eyes to the existence of a God. " 

" Ah, " said I, " that is a dreadful thought ! It seems to me that 
the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evi- 
dences of a Creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way 
the man who knows most of the material world should see the 
most conclusive evidences of design and a Designer. The humblest 
blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. What force is 
it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead 
earth? Who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances 
that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, graz- 
ing animals? What a gap would it have been in nature if there 
had been no such growth, or if, being such, it had been poisonous 
or inedible? Whose persistent purpose is it — whose everlasting 
will— that year after year, and age after age, stirs the tender roots 
to hfe and growth, for the sustenance of uncounted generations of 
creatures? Every blade of grass, therefore, points with its tiny 
finger upward to heaven, and proclaims an eternal, a benevolent 



162 DONNELLIANA, 

God. It is to me a dreadful thing that men can penetrate farther 
and farther into nature with their senses, and leave their reasoning- 
faculties behind them. Instead of mind recognizing mind, dust 
simply perceives dust. This is the suicide of the soul." — Ccesar^s 
Column. 

The Parallelism of Legends. And then grave and able 
men — philosophers, scientists — were seen with note-books and 
pencils going out into Hindoo villages, into German cottages, into 
Highland huts, into Indian tepees, in short, into all lands, taking 
down, with the utmost care, accuracy and respect, the fairy- stories, 
myths and legends of the people — as repeated by old peasant- 
women, " the knitters in the sun, " or by " gray-haired warriors, 
famoused for fights. ' And when they came to put these narratives 
in due form, and, as it were, in parallel columns, it became apparent 
that they threw great floods of light upon the history of the world, 
and especially upon the question of the unity of the race. They 
proved that all the nations were repeating the same stories, in some 
cases in almost identical words, just as their ancestors had heard 
them, in some most ancient land, in ^' the dark background and 
abysm of time," when the progenitors of the German, Gaul, Gael, 
Greek, Koman, Hindoo, Persian, Egyptian, Arabian, and the red 
people of America, dwelt together under the same roof-tree and 
used the same language. — Bagnarok. 

Justice to the Eed Man. Let it not be said that the nation 
shall advance in its career of greatness regardless of the destruction 
of the red mani There is room enough in God's world for 9^11 the 
races he has created to inhabit it. Thirty million white people can 
certainly find space, somewhere on this broad continent, for a third 
of a million of those who originally possessed the whole of it. While 
we are inviting to our shores the opjjressed races of mankind let us, 
at least, deal justly by those whose rights here antedate our own by 
countless centuries. — Speech in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 

THE POVERTY OF HUMAN INVENTION. 

In the next place, we must remember how impossible it is for 
the mind to invent an entirely n^w thing. 

What dramatist or novelist has ever yet made a plot which didnot 
consist of events that bad already transpired sorcipwl^ere on earth f 



EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 163 

He might intensify events, concentrate and combine them, or am- 
plify them ; but that is all. Men in all ages have suffered from jeal- 
ousy, like Othello ; have committed murders, like Macbeth ; have 
yielded to the svray of morbid minds, like Hamlet; have stolen, hed 
and debauched, like Falstafl"; there are Oliver Twists, Bill Sykeses, 
Nancies, Micawbers, Pickwicks and Pecksniffs in every great city. 

There is nothing in the mind of man that has not pre-existed in 
nature. Can we imagine a person, who never saw or heard of an 
elephant, drawing a picture of such a two-tailed creature? It was 
thought at one time that man made the flying-dragon out of his 
own imagination ; but we now know that the image of the ptero- 
dactyl had simply descended from generation to generation. Sin- 
bad's great bird, the roc, Avas considered a flight of the Oriental 
fancy, until science revealed the bones of the dinornis. All the 
winged beasts breathing fire are simply a recollection of the comet. 
In fact, even with the pattern of nature before it, the human 
mind has not greatly exaggerated them; it has never drawn a bird 
larger than the dinornis or a beast larger than the mammoth.— 
Ragnaroh. 

Winter Dawn. 
The pale-faced dawn, like a shepherd's child, 
Goes out o'er the moorlands bleak and wild; 
Lonely and cold, and half asleep, 
And pausing ever to stand and weep. 
The Millers Carving Up the Farmer. These fellows delib- 
erately sit down on us and carve us up, and divide our territory among 
themselves, saying to one another: ^' You take the hindquarter, and 
you take these ribs; Til take the sirloin steak, and you can have 
this piece of the rump. " And the people are stripped until the State 
looks Uke a Greely Expedition. There is nothing left but the bones, 
and the pleasing consciousness that we are a great, intelligent and 
self-governing people ! — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

The War Instinct. It was pleasant to sit, in the cool of the 
evening, on the piazza, and hsten to the war stories of these old 
heroes. To the philosophic mind they illustrated what a curious 
fighting animal man is, and how singularly, under high excitements 
he considers life and limb as of less consequence than insistancc 
upon his own opinions, It seems to me strange that a man should 



1(>4 DONNELLIANA. 

be willing to go out of the world to improve the world, when, after 
he goes out of it, the world can be of no more interest to him. The 
presence of vast war passions, in great bodies of men, inciting them 
to dash themselves to death, is one of the marvels of the world. I 
suppose those passions are the survivors of emotions and habits 
possessed by our remote and savage ancestors, at a time when every 
particle of food a man swallowed had to be fought for, and one man 
hved only by another man's death. The human being, as all wars 
testify, is, when you take off the crust of social refinement, simply 
a ferocious wild beast.— Z)oc^or Huguet. 

Civilization. Civilization is the steadily increasing power of 
spirit over matter. In the future men will control all the forces 
of the planet. — Journal, 1885. 

SHYLOCK AND USURY. 

The purpose of the play was to stigmatize the selfishness mani- 
fested in the taking of excessive interest; which is, indeed, to the 
poor debtor, many a time the cutting out of the very heart itself. 
And hence the mighty genius has, in the name of Shylock, created 
a synonym for usurer, and has made in the Jewish money-lender 
the most terrible picture of greed, inhumanity and wickedness in 
all literature. 

Bacon saw the necessity for borrowing a-nd lending, and hence 
of moderate compensation for the use of money. But he pointed 
out, in his essay Of Usury, the great evils which resulted from the 
practice. He contended that, if the owners of money could not lend 
it out, they would have to employ it themselves in business ; and 
hence, instead of the " lazy trade of usury," there would be enter- 
prises of all kinds, and employment for labor, and increased reve- 
nues to the kingdom. And his profound wisdom was shown in this 
utterance : 

" It [usury] bringeth the treasures of a realm or state into a 
few hands; for the usurer being at certainties, and all others at un- 
certainties, at the end of the game most of the money will be in his 
box; and ever a state flourisheth most when wealth is more equally 
spread."— r/ie Great Cryptogram. 

The Comets. Man, by an inherited instinct, regards the comet 
as a great terror and a great foe; and the heart of humanity sits 
uneasily when one blitzes in the sky. Even to the scholar apd tfie 



EXWACTS AND SELECTIONS. 10" 

Kcieiil 



list they arc a puzzle aud a fear; they are erratic, unusual, an- 
archieal, monstrous — something let loose, like a tiger of the heav- 
ens, athwart an orderly, peaceful and harmonious world. They 
may be impalpable and harmless attenuations of gas, or they may 
be loaded with death and ruin; but in any event man cannot cou'- 
template them without terror. —Bagnarok. 

The Death of Webster. Our great men may have left us. 
One by one, weary with the race of life, they have sought the silent 
chambers of the dead. Now, not one bold, uncompromising front 
is left to breast back the flood of popular excitement that may sweep 
over this open land. 

'' E'eu .AlarshfiekV.s giant oak. whose stormy brow- 
Oft turned the ocean-tempest from the west, 
Lies on the shore he guarded long — and now 
Our startled eagle knows not where to rest."' 
Yet how urgent is the necessity for great men. We are near the 
most dangerous era of our country's history. Two hundred years 
of unshaken and unweakened existence would render the union of 
these States holy; would hedge it in with sancity, and solicit all the 
reverential feelings of man in its behalf. But now, old enough to 
expand, but yet too young to fill its destined mold, its energies are 
running wild and purposeless. It hath become already 
"A shape that hath no certainty of shape, 
A shape that shape has none." 

—Alumni Address, 1850. 

The Negroes not Apes. ''No, no, gentlemen," I replied, 
" do not be unfair to them: a race that could produce a Toussaint 
rOuverture is not simian. You cannot rank a coal-black negro, 
like Toussaint, who compelled the surrender of a French army, 
under Brandicourt; took twenty-eight Spanish batteries in four 
days; and, with half their force, compelled the surrender of the 
British army, you cannot, I think, rank him with the monkeys. He 
brought Napoleon's brother-in-law, Leclerc, to his knees, and was 
only overcome at last by treachery. The darkest page in the his- 
tory of the great Corsican is his treatment of that magnificent ne- 
gro. He kidnaped him by fraud and left him to die of starvation 
and be eaten by the rats in a French prison. If he had treated a 
white man in that manner, the whole world would have risen up to 



166 DONNELLIANA. 

denounce liim; but Toussaint's dusky skin justified everything.''— 
Doctor Huguet. 

THE TYRANNY OF CORPORATIONS. 
The men of 1776 did not shake off the tyranny of G-eorge III. to 
leave their descendants under a worse tyranny —the tyranny of 
corporations — the tyranny of money. 

" Shall we who struck the lion down 
Pay the wolf homage 1 " 

Our ancestors fled from their native lands to escape the despotism 
of hereditary lords, whose pretensions were sanctified by the tradi- 
tions of centuries. Shall we submit to the tyranny of shoddy lords, 
petroleum aristocrats, men of yesterday, who from their palace cars 
and mills look down upon the multitude as ^' hewers of wood and 
drawers of water " 'i 

Our nation was born of a fight about a stamp act and a tea-tax; 
shall it quietly submit to the doctrine that the creations of our own 
legislation, the railroad corporations, have " vested rights " to tax 
our industry to the limits of their discretion; to reduce us if they 
will to a peasantry; to send us back to the era of spinning-wheels and 
wooden shoes, and that we have no remedy from this absolute des- 
potism save revolution or emigrsition^. —Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

The Spirit World. For instance, he added, there might be 
right here, in this very hall, the houses and work-shops and mar- 
kets of a multitude of beings, who swarmed about us, but of such ex- 
treme tenuity that they pass through our substance, and we through 
theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. All 
that we knew of Nature taught us that she is tireless in the prodi- 
gality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her 
workmanship ; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit 
is simply an attenuated condition of matter. — Ccesar^s Column. 

Liberty and Equality. Our nation is based upon the hberty 
and equahty of all men. What do liberty and equality mean ? 
Simply, justice. Liberty assures us that no higher power shall 
oppress us, and so deprive us of our just rights; equality, that at 
the polling-place, in the law court and in the legislative hall we 
shall have exactly the same rights as our fellow-men. How little 
and how plain a thing is this, and yet it has assured the growth 



BXTBACTS AKD ^EL:^CTI0NS. ir>7 

and happinoss of a migbly nation '. And througli what seas of bat- 
tle and blood has mankind waded to reach these few simple prin- 
ciples f — Memorial Address, 1884. 

A Human Shark. This was Lawyer Buryhill. We all have 
our instincts, and mine warned me against this man from the very 
first. And yet he was not ill-lo.oking. He was a medium-sized 
man, of dark complexion, active in his motions and pleasant in his 
manners; but there was a look out of his furtive, rapidly-rolhug 
black eyes, as if they would grasp everything they encountered — a 
greedy, cruel look. And his hair stood up, especially upon the mid- 
dle line of his bead, in a way that reminded me unpleasantly of the 
bristles I once observed on the back of a hyena in a menagerie. 
The suavity of his mouth and the softness of his mellifluous voice 
were strongly and promptly contradicted by the hardness and the 
greed of his eyes, which, as from a watch-tower, looked out over 
tlie sham of his face, and seemed to say to the observer, '' Do not be 
deceived by these wrecker's hghts ; here is the real man. Beware 
of the rocks. " Indeed, it always seemed to me that he regarded those 
about him in a sort of rapacious, proprietary way, very like a man- 
eating tiger who drools a little at the mouth as he contemplates the 
group of unconscious Hindoos he is about to spring upon. So when 
Buryhill looked at his fellow-man it was as if his softly working mouth 
tasted the pleasant flavor of property. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Winds. 
The bat-like winds, 
Dim-winged in desolation. — 1850. 

The Color Line. There is a general misconception as to the 
color of the European and American races. Europe is supposed to 
be peopled exclusively by white men ; but in reality every shade 
of color is represented on that continent, from the fair complexion 
of the fairest of the Swedes to the dark-skinned inhabitants of the 
Mediterranean coast, only a shade lighter than the Berbers, or 
Moors, on the opposite side of that sea. Tacitus spoke of the 
'' Black Celts," and the term, so far as complexion goes, might not 
inappropriately be apphed to some of the Itahans, Spaniards and 
Portuguese, while the Basques are represented as of a still darker 
Ime. Tylor says {Anthropology, p. 67), '' On the whole, it seems 



168 DONNMLLIANA. 

that the distinction of color, from the fairest Engiishnian to the 
darkest African, has no hard and fast hnes, but varies gradually 
from one tint to another." — Atlantis. 

The Clergymen of the Twentieth Century. The audi- 
ence were evidently keenly intellectual and highly educated, and 
they listened with great attention to this discourse. In fact, I began 
to perceive that the office of preacher has only survived, in this 
material age, on condition that the priest shall gather up, during 
the week, from the literary and scientific publications of the whole 
world, the gems of current thought and information, digest them 
carefully, and pour them forth, in attractive form, for their delec- 
tation on Sunday. As a sort of oratorical and poetical reviewer, 
essayist and rhapsodist, the parson and his church had survived 
the decadence of religion. — Gcesafs Column. 

THE STORY OF THE GRANITE. 

And even here we stumble over a still more tremendous fact : 

It has been supposed that the primeval granite was the molten 
crust of the original glowing ball of the earth, when it first hardened 
as it cooled. 

But, lo ! the microscope (so Professor Winchell tells us) reveals 
that this very granite, this foundation of all our rocks, this ancient 
globe-crust, is itself made up of sedimentary rocks, which were 
melted, fused and run together in some awful conflagration which 
wiped out all life on the planet. 

Beyond the granite, then, there were seas and shores, winds and 
rains, rivers and sediment gathered into the waters to form the rocks 
melted up in this granite; there were countless ages; possibly there 
were animals and man; but all melted and consumed together. 
Was this, too, the result of a comet visitation ? 

Who shall tell the age of this old earth ? Who shall count the 
ebbs and flows of eternity"? Who shall say how often this planet 
has been developed up to the highest forms of life, and how often 
all this has been obliterated in universal ^re'^^Eagnarok. 

The Illusions of Love. I received a cordial invitation from 
the Colonel to visit the Ruddiman mansion ; and I accompanied my 
beloved in the stage which bore her to the parental roof. It was a 
hot and dusty ride, over a country parched by the excessive heat of 



EXmACrs AX J) SELECTIONS. \m 

the seiisoD; but such is the chanu of love that, as I l(Kjk back upon 
it, it seems to me that I rode through the valleys of the Hesperides, 
fanned by cooling breezes from the Holy Mountains, the whole 
landscape ablaze with many-hued flowers and foliage.^- Doctor 
Huguet. 

What we Call Shakespeare. Imagine a mighty spirit, such 
as he vas who wrote these plays. A mighty spuit! Aye: for 
what other name is fitted to stand by that which we call Shake- 
speare"? Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Dante, Moliere, Goethe — 
giants of time they were, but they shrink into mediocrity in this 
august presence. All of dramatic power the most wonderful; of 
poetry the most resplendent; of art the most subtle; of philosophy 
the most profound ; of learning the most universal ; of genius the 
most subhme — this is Shakespeare. Increasing civilization has 
simply enlarged our capacity to comprehend these wonderful writ- 
ings; they dominate the race; they are taking possession of the 
brain and blood of the wliole world. — ArticJe in North American Be- 
vietv, June, 1887. 

Diversifying your Industries. Yes; and when they have 
by unwise legislation — by criminal legislation— built up India and 
Russia, and ruined wheat-raising in America, they tell the farmers 
to '' diversify their industries. " Yes, I say so, 'too. I would advise 
them to raise wheat — and raise oats — and raise barley — and raise 
corn — and raise h — 1. [Great laughter and applause.] — Speech in 
the Northwestern Waterivays Convention, 1885. 

Numbers. What are numbers to God? A man may have 
more microbes in his left leg than there are stars in the universe. — 
Journal, 1885. 

A WORLD WITHOUT OPPRESSORS. 

And how little it costs to make mankind happy I 
And what do we miss in all this joyous scene ? Why, where are 
the wolves that used to prowl through the towns and cities of the 
world that has passed away"? The slinking, sullen, bloody-mouthed 
miscreants, who, under one crafty device or another, would spring 
upon and tear and destroy the poor, shrieking, innocent people — 
where are they f 

Ah ! this is the difference : The government which formerly fed 



170 DONNELLIANA. 

and housed these monsters, under cunning kennels of pei'verted 
law, and broke open holes in the palisades of society, that they 
might crawl through and devastate the community, now shuts up 
every crevice through which they could enter, stops every hole of 
opportunity, crushes down every uprising instinct of cruelty and 
selfishness. And the wolves have disappeared, and our little world 
is a garden of peace and beauty, musical with laughter. 

And so mankind moves with linked hands through ha;^py lives 
to happy deaths, and God smiles down upon them from His throne 
beyond the stars.— (7<^5ar'5 Column. 

The Woods of Sullivan Coui^ty, Pennsylvania. 

We stumbled over the moldering trunks, 
Half in the moss and the morass sunk; 
And climbed the rifts in the ragged rocks, 

Where the dark green laurels grew; 
Shielding the while from our rifle-locks 

The coldly scattered dew. 

And we passed the white ash, lone and bare, 
Standing a smooth, straight column there; 
'Mid the trunks of brown and leaves of green, 
A pillar of startling whiteness seen. 
Many a log and branch around 
Are broken and mixed on the mossy ground; 
For ages and ages have passed away. 
With their silent fall and their slow decay; 
And rarely the foot of man hath been 
On the paths obscure of this silent scene. 
See how the wilderness roughens; — and here 
Is the two-pronged track of the leaping deer ; 
And through the brake, on the ridges there, 
Groes the broad rough trail of the coward bear.— i55i. 
Delia Bacon. We no longer burn men for their opinions, but 
it is still uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous, to run counter to 
the universal belief of the unreasoning multitude. When Deha Bacon 
announced her conviction, the result of great study and a life-time 
of thought, that Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare Plays, all 
society rose up in insurrection against her, and she was hounded 



EXTRACTS ANi) SELTJCTIONS. 171 

UDct persecuted, ridiculed aud misrepreseuted, until the brain of the 
poor woman — the best brain it was in America — gave way under 
the inhuman pressure. And then her tormentors pointed to her 
insanity, and have ever since continued to point to it, as conclusive 
proof of the folly of her theory. As if there were not thousands of 
women in the insane asylums who beheved that Shakspere wrote 
the plays. As if insanity proved anything but physical degen- 
eration. — Article in North American Bevieiv, June, 1887. 

The Fate of the Octoroon. Abigail had many gloomy 
moments which her mistress knew well how to interpret. The 
seven-eighths of her blood protested against being dragged down 
to servile life by the other eighth. She well knew what a dreadful 
barrier of i^rejudice stood in the way of her becoming the wife of any 
respectable white man; while she shrank, with Saxon horror, 
against descending still lower in the social scale of marriage with 
one of the darker stock. And yet she was fair and graceful and 
intelligent, and fitted to make any man happy. But society had 
placed gyves on her feet, and manacles on her hands; she could fall, 
but she could not arise. The inextinguishable taint of the slave was 
upon her; a taint more dreadful than leprosy ; more fearful than the 
mark which the Lord God branded on the brow of the murderer Cain. 
High walls of caste were built around her, and she could not see the 
sun of hope shining into her prison-house, even at high noon. The 
whole world was banded against her — against her, a white woman. 
All that was bright and cultured aud beautiful in the world pointed 
her downward to the abyss of dishonor, and with jeers and mock- 
iugs told her that her white womanhood was fit only for degrada- 
tion. — Doctor Huguet. 

Francis Bacon. Imagine such a mighty genius as this, but 
poor and powerless, living in little, dirty London; in petty England, 
with its three million people, dominated by Elizabeth — 

" a woman, though the phrase may seem uncivil, 
As able and as cruel as the devil. " 

Imagine how full such a brain and heart must have been : wrath, 
revenge, sorrow, shame, pity, wisdom — and speechless. — Article in 
North American Review, June, 1887. 

The Farmer. A mind well informed, a body well covered; a 



172 BONNELLIANA. 

stomach well fed, a heart well dh^ected, make a perfect mao ; and 
this Minnesota of ours can give us all these as perfectly as any part 
of the world. The farmer should be the best fed and the best in- 
formed man on earth. He is too often the meanest fed and the 
least intelligent. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Its Duty. Religion should improve man's condition — not 
merely teach him how to endure it. — Journal, 1885. 

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE. 

I see no reason — in the nature of things — why women should 
not vote as well as men. 

They pay taxes and are governed by the laws. Why should 
they not have a voice in imposing the one and making the other 'l 

Woman, it is urged, is physically weaker than man. That 
proves nothing. The right to vote is not a question of physical 
strength. If it were, the pugilist would have more votes than the 
philosopher. 

But, it is said, women do not want to vote. The best way to 
demonstrate that is to give them the right to refuse. 

But, it is said, the exercise of the right of suffrage would unsex 
a woman. That is the Turk's reason for keeping his wife's head 
tied up in a towel. 

The advancement of civihzation has not unsexed women by 
freeing them from slavery. It has refined and elevated them. 

But, it is said, why should vile and degraded women vote? 
Why do vile and degraded men vote ? The good women far out- 
number the bad, and the pure women are more numerous than the 
pure men. The saloons are not maintained by women. 

But, says one, would you have women scrambling at the poll- 
ing-places, with tbe men ? Do they not scramble with them in the 
street-cars, and at the post-ofiaces ? And why should they not vote, 
as they do in Italy, by letter f 

Let every election express the best sense of the whole people, 
unbiased, unterrifled and unbought; — and especially the best sense 
of the best and purest part of the community — the women.— 
Journal, 1885. 

Spirits. Just as there are sea-creatures that have not the 
power to abstract the lime from the sea -water to make a shell, but 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 173 

remain formless pulp, so there are spiritual existences which cannot 
gather matter around them, but remain invisible. And^ death is, 
therefore, simply the arrestment of the power of the spirit to enforce 
matter into its service. The error of our modern philosopheis is in 
studying the shell and not its inhabitant. They pursue a sort of con- 
cliology of the universe. — Journal, 1885. 

Bacok's Cipher. He will give the world not only the greatest 
dramatic and poetical compositions it has ever possessed, but he 
will make them a cipher-work of incomprehensible industry and 
ingenuity, weaving together, as in a majestic loom, fact, fiction, 
history, comedy, poetry, biography, and making thereof a tapestry 
fit to adorn the palace of the gods. — Article in North American Re- 
view, June, 1887. 

Raising Girl Babies. A writer in the Zumbrota Independent 
is greatly exercised because some farmer in that town raises barley, 
because, says he, the barley makes beer, and the beer makes the 
drunk come. This gentleman must be a descendant of the man 
who was found 

'' Hanging of his cat on Monday, 
For killing of a rat on Sunday." 

A great deal of the vice and iniquity of this world is due to aban- 
doned women — ergo (according to the Zumbrota philosopher), it is 
a criminal thing to raise girl babies. — Anti-Monopolist. 

THE EDITORS. 

I don't wish to flatter you. You are no better than other men; 
perhaps a little worse ; and yet perchance no worse than others 
would be in your position. Mankind in the aggregate is honest — in 
detail it is a scamp. There is more pressure put on an editor than 
on his fellow-citizens generally. You might, perhaps, paraphrase 
Falstafif and say: '' As I have more power than another man I have 
more frailty." Frailty is commensurate with temptation. Let no 
man boast until he has undergone the pressure. As Burns says : 

'* "What's done we partly may compute ; 
We know not what's resisted." 

You have generally improved of late years. There is a higher 
tone among you. 

^Yben you are able to praise a political opponent, who deserves 



174 DONNELLIANA. 

praise, as fully and freely as you do one of your own party ; when 
you are able to condemn one of your own friends, who is false to the 
people, as vehemently as you do your enemies, then, indeed, will 
the community look to you as absolute guides and leaders, and your 
influence for good will be simply incalculable ; for you will speak, 
like Deity, with the voice of absolute justice. — Speech to the Editors 
of Wisconsin, 1889. 

Maeeiage. But I do think that the union of man and wife 
should be something more than a mere civil contract. Marriage is 
not a partnership to sell dry goods — (sometimes, it is true, it is 
principally an obligation to buy them) — or to practice medicine or 
law together; it is, or should be, an intimate blending of two souls, 
and natures, and lives ; and where the marriage is happy and per- 
fect there is, undoubtedly, a growing-together, not only of spirit 
and character, but even in the x>hysical appearance of man and 
wife. Now, as these two souls came — we concede — ^out of heaven,, 
it seems to me that the ceremony which thus destroys their individ-- 
uality, and blends them into one, should have some touch and color 
of heaven in it also.- 



The Sixteenth Century. But these plays were written in 
the sixteenth century, not in the nineteenth; in the reign of Ehza- 
beth, not in the reign of Victoria and Grover. They were written 
in an age when free thought and free speech led to the scaffold and 
the stake ; when the direful odors of the flesh of burning human 
beings filled the air, and their shrieks deafened the ears of men; 
when the philosopher Bruno was perishing in the streets of Rome 
and the unbehever Jett was dying in the flames of Smithfleld. — 
Article in North American Bevietv, June, 1887. 

Living on Corn Cobs. " And now we hail the arrival of boiled 
corn-cobs on our humble table. ^'—Herald. 

Aud mighty humble it must be, when you have to live on boiled 
Gorn-cobs. It comes from publishing a Republican paper, Brother 
Tyler ; if you had an Anti-Monopoly paper you would have ears of 
corn, larger than your own, with corn on them.— Anti-Mo72opolist. 

The Criminal Class. Behind them are dust, confusion, dead 
bodies, hammered and beaten out of all semblance of humanity; 
and, worse than all, the crimina] classes — fbat wretched aufl iue^^- 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 175 

plicable residuum, who have uo grievance against the world except 
their own existence — the base, the cowardly, the cruel, the sneak- 
ing, the inhuman, the horrible I These flock hke jackals in the 
track of lions. They rob the dead bodies; they break into houses; 
they kill if they are resisted; they fill their pockets. Their joy is 
unbounded. Elysium has descended upon earth for them this day. 
Pickpockets, sneak -thieves, confidence-men, burglars, robbers, as- 
sassins, the refuse and outpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all 
are here. — Ccesafs Column. 

Benevolence. From those to whom God has given the humane 
spirit he expects much. His most precious gift is a benevolent 
h^'HYt.— Journal, 1891. 

The Age of Ciphers. The age of ciphers ended when the 
age of liberty came. Despotism always begets secretiveness. To 
speak is to die. — Article in North American Beview, June, 1887. 

The Importance of Agriculture. In this country the basis 
of everything is agriculture. We stepped into a candy shop, in St. 
Paul, the other day, to buy some fruit. "How are times?" we 
asked. " Well, " said the proprietor, casting a wise look, Micawber- 
like, askance the sky, '' if these rains will only hold up so that the 
farmers can save their wheat, we will pull through.'' Even the 
candy shop rested on agriculture. We could not but think of the 
indignation with which, a few years ago, our declaration was re- 
ceived that the farms of the West were of more importance to this 
nation than all the protected manufactures of New England. — Anti- 
Monopolist. 

FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES. 

'' Well, let us suppose," said Maximilian, "that you were not 
immediately murdered by the men whose privileges you had de- 
stroyed — even as the Gracchi were of old — what would you do 
next? Men differ in every detail. Some have more industry, or 
more strength, or more cunning, or more foresight, or more acquis- 
itiveness than others. How are you to prevent these men from 
becoming richer than the rest?" 

" I should not try to," I said. " These differences in men are 
fundamental, and not to.be abolished by legislation; neither are the 
instincts you speak of in themselves injurioiis. Civilization, in tact, 



17G . BONNELLIANA. 

reste upon them. It is only in their excess that they become de- 
structive. It is right and wise and proper for men to accumulate 
sufQcient wealth to maintain their age in peace, dignity and plenty, 
and to be able to start their children into the arena of life sufficiently 
equipped. A thousand men in a community worth $10,000, or $50,- 
000, or even $100,000 each, may be a benefit, perhaps a blessing; 
but one man worth fifty or one hundred millions, or, as we have 
them now-a-days, one thousand millions, is a threat against the 
safety and happiness of every man in the world. — G(Esafs Column. 

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

At last, on the plains of Judea, in a remote province of the 
Roman Euapire, holding very much such relation to Rome as New 
Mexico does to-day to the United States, there rose up a being 
who, in tbe very heyday and culmination of Roman greatness, sent 
forth a wonderful declaration of principles to the world — not of 
bloodshed, not of cruelty, not of conquest, but the grand doctrine 
of universal charity, universal beuevolence and universal justice. 
Lo ! what a great light has towered up to enlighten the darkened 
world. And the white race, the race called dominant, are but the 
instruments in the hand of God to carry these glorious principles to 
the remotest regions of the world. 

But these principles have had one long, dark, terrible struggle 
from the day when they found their birth in Judea. First, they en- 
couutered the hard, unprogressive spirit of Hebraism ; then the cruel 
and licentious genius of the Roman people ; and then the fierce bar- 
barians who poured in stormy hordes out of northern Europe. But 
everywhere they triumphed over art and bigotry and barbarism and 
cruelty, until to-day they possess the hearts of the entire white race 
of the world with the doctrines of universal love and the brother- 
hood of man. — Speech, 1889. 

The Shakespeare :Myth. We are asked to believe that the 
mightiest mind with which G-od ever blessed the race dwelt for 
fifty-two years on this planet, in the midst of the busy, bustling age 
of Elizabeth and James I., surrounded by wits, poets, philosophers, 
pamphleteers, printers and publishers, and in contact with events 
which affected the whole world and all history, and yet touched 
these men and events at no point, and left not the slightest impress 



EXTRACTS ANV SELECTIONS. 177 

on his age as an individual. It is as if a gigantic spirit had de- 
scended from another sphere, strode unheeded throii^ii the busy 
marts of men, dropped behind him carelessly vast and incalculable 
works, and then, striding on, disappeared suddenly and utterly in 
thin air. — Article in North American Bevieiv, June, 1887. 

The Scarcity of Good Men. He laughed. " That is all 
right, " he said; " good and unselfish men are so scarce in this world 
that one cannot do too much for them. We must be careful lest, 

like the dodo and the great auk, the breed becomes extinct." 

Ccesar^s Colurrm. 

Imperfect Lying. Josh Billings once remarked that " many 
a man set up for a rascal who, if he had examined himself carefully, 
would have found that God intended him for a fool." Postmaster 

■ — f of , is a case in point. He lies so glibly that 

between breaths he forgets the lie he has just told ; and hence 
there is not in his statements that artfully constructed continuity 
of falsehood which the ingenious rogue always preserves. — TJie 
Ant i- Monopolist. 

A. T. STEWART. 

In 1861 there was a rich merchant in this city, named A. T. 
Stewart. Hundreds of thousands of men saw in the war only the 
great questions of the Union and the abohtion of human bondage, 
the freeing of four milhons of human beings, and the preservation 
of the honor of the flag; and they rushed forward eager for the fray. 
They were ready to die that the Nation and Liberty might live. 
But while their souls were thus inflamed with great and splendid 
emotions, and they forgot home, family, wealth, life, everything, 
Stewart, the rich merchant, saw simply the fact that the war would 
cut off communication between the North and the cotton-producing 
States, and that this would result in a rise in the price of cotton 
goods ; and so, amid the wild agitations of patriotism, the beating 
of drums and the blaring of trumpets, he sent out his agents and 
bought up all the cotton goods he could lay his hands on. He 
made a million dollars, it is said, by this little piece of cunning. 
But if all men had thought and acted as Stewart did, we should 
have had no Union, no country, and there would be left to-day 
neither honor nor manhood in all the world. The nation was saved 



178 JDONNELLIANA. 

by those poor fellows who did not consider the price of cotton 
goods in the hour of America's crucial agony. Their dust now bil- 
lows the earth of a hundred battle-fields; but their memory will be 
kept sweet in the hearts of men forever ! On the other hand, the 
fortune of the great merchant, as it did no good during his life, so, 
after his death, it descended upon an alien to his blood; while 
even his wretched carcass was denied, by the irony of fate, rest 
under his splendid mausoleum, and may have found its final 
sepulchre in the stomachs of dogs ! — CcBsafs Column. 

COULD A COMET STRIKE THE EARTH? 

Reader, the evidence I am about to present will satisfy you, 
not only that a comet might have struck the earth in the remote 
past, but that the marvel is that the earth escapes collision for a 
single century, I had almost said for a single year. 

How many comets do you suppose there are within the limits of 
the solar system (and remember that the solar system occupies but 
an insignificant portion of universal space) ? 

Half a dozen — -fifty — a hundred — you will answer. 

Let us put the astronomers on the witness-stand: 

Kepler affirmed that '' comets aee scatteeed theough the 

HEAVENS WITH AS MUCH PEOrUSIO:N" AS FISHES IN THE OCEAN". " 

Think of that ! 

'* Three or four telescopic comets are now entered upon astro- 
nomical records every year. Lalande had a list of seven hundred 
comets that had been observed in his time. " 

Arago estimated that the comets belonging to the solar system, 
within the orbit of Neptune, numbered seventeen million five 
hundred thousand ! 

Lambert regards five hundred millions as a very moderate esti- 
mate! . . . 

But do these comets come anywhere near the orbit of the earth? 

Look at the map on the preceding page, from Amedee Guille- 
min's great work, The Heavens, and you can answer the ques- 
tion for yourself. 

Here you see the orbit of the earth overwhelmed in a complica- 
tion of comet-orbits. The earth, here, is like a lost child in the 
midst of a forest full of wild beasts. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 179 

And this diagram represents the orbits of only six comets out of 
those seventeen millions or five hundred millions ! 

It is a celestial game of ten-pins, with the solar system for a 
bowling-alley, and the earth waiting for a ten-strike. 

In 1832 the earth and Biela's comet, as I will show more particu- 
larly hereafter, were both making for the same spot, moving with 
celestial rapidity, but the comet reached the point of junction one 
month before the earth did; and, as the comet was not polite 
enough to wait for us to come up, this generation missed a revela- 
tion. — Bagnarol:. 

THE DEMOCRATIC COW-CATCHER. 

And we must have in the constitution of human nature a con- 
servative, an unprogressive, a hold -back party, which performs the 
otilice of the back straps in the harness. This sentiment of conserva- 
tism in many respects is advantageous, and it grows out of a natural 
indisposition of the human mind to go forward. It grows out of the 
natural disposition of the human heart to be content with what we 
have. It is best illustrated in the case of that Greenlauder who, 
when the captain of a whale ship was commiserating him upon his 
''miserable'' condition, replied, ^^ Miserable! Miserable indeed! 
What do you call miserable? Have I not plenty of train oil, and a 
fish bone through my nose?'^ And so there is no condition so 
wretched but that you will find some one to defend its evils —some 
one to hold fast to the train oil and the fish bones ! 

In the constitution of mankind, in the very nature of man, there 
must be these two parties ; and all I have to complain of in the Dem- 
ocratic party is that they have been so slow in their movements ; in 
fact, they have done nothing else but hold back. They have moved 
so slowly that they have been like the trains upon the Hannibal and 
St. Jo Railroad, during the war, where they had to put the cow- 
catcher on the end of the back car to keep the cows from running 
over the train. 

I say this good-naturedly, simply as an admonition, for the future, 
to my Democratic friends.— /S^eec/« at St. Paid, Minn., Jan. 8, 1869. 

The Great Catastrophe. The Drift marks probably the 
most awful convulsion and catastrophe that has ever fallen upon 
the globe. The deposit of these continental masses of clay, sand 
and gravel was but one of the features of the appalling event. In 



180 DONNELLIANA. 

addition to this the earth at the same time was cleft with graat 
cracks or fissures, which reached down through many miles of the 
planet's crust to the central fires and released the boiling rocks im- 
prisoned in its bosom, and these poured to the surface, as igneous, 
intrusive, or trap-rocks. Where the great breaks were not deep 
enough to reach the central fires, they left mighty fissures in the sur- 
face, which, in the Scandinavian regions, are known as fiords, and 
which constitute a striking feature of the scenery of these northern 
lands; they are great canals— hewn, as it were, in the rock— with 
high walls penetrating from the sea far into the interior of the land. 
They are found in G-reat Britain, Maine, Nova Scotia, Labrador, 
Greenland and on the western coast of North America. — Bagnaroh. 
The Teue Kemedy. We regret to note the fact that the dan- 
ger of labor troubles east and west seems to be on the increase. 
This is all wrong. Violence will only be followed by repression, 
and turbulence will be an excuse for greater injustice. The ballot- 
box is the true remedy. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

THE WOKLD'S PROGRESS. 

In our own country we present a spectacle which may well chal- 
lenge the astonishment and admiration of the nations. Everywhere 
growth, increase, industry, commerce, wealth, happiness. Even in 
remote India the work of progress extends, and we see where four 
thousand miles of railroad have been built at an expense of 440 
miUions of dollars, advanced in subsidies by the British Government. 

Turn to Egypt, which for thousands of years — from the time of 
Cleopatra — has slept the sleep of death, and even there the awaken- 
ing spirit of progress is present; and under the very shadow of the 
pyramids and in sight of the tombs of the Pharaohs we find steam 
plows of American manufacture turning up the sod, propelled by 
steam made from coal brought from- Manchester and Newcastle. 

Aye, my friends, we live in a glorious, in a wonderful age. Our 
portion of mankind has always, since the revival of civilization in 
Europe, moved forward. At first it progressed slowly and almost 
imperceptibly. The movement of society was like the movement of 
the old glaciers On the Alps— those great rivers of ice, where, to 
mark the advance, Agassiz had to drive stakes, one in the adjacent 
rock and one in the face of the glacier, and then watch for hours. 



KKTh'ACTs AM) SP^Lf^CTlONS. 181 

perhaps lor days, to determine that any progrcBs had been njadc. 
And even as the glacier in its slow but irresistible movement tore 
and wore the breast of the rocks over which it passe'd, so this move- 
ment toward liberty disrupted the very bosom of society. Now the 
glacier has melted into the mighty river of human progress, broad 
and rapid, gay with streamers, bright with white sails, bearing on 
its bosom the wealth, the hopes, the happiness of mankind. This is 
the river of modern civilization, moving under the impulse of Chris- 
tianity.— ASi^^ec/^ to the Colored People of St. Paul, 1869. 

The Heathen Gods. Man reasons, at first, from below up- 
ward; from god-like men up to man-like gods ; from Caesar, the 
soldier, to Caesar, the deity.— Magnarol: 

The Progeny of Evil. As you sow, so must you reap. Evil 
has but one child — death ! For hundreds of years you have nursed 
and nurtured Evil. Do you complain if her monstrous progeny is 
here now, with sword and torch? What else did you expect? Did 
you think she would breed angels i—Coesafs Column. 

The Chariot of Progress. The golden chariot of human 
progress moves grandly down the avenue of time. It is laden with 
flowers and fruit and laughing children; it is surrounded by the 
revelry of delicious music; it is drawn by the tumultuous hopes of a 
happy multitude. But its wheels are red,— red as the wheels of 
Juggernaut,— with the blood of the milhons who, on a thousand 
battle-fields, have vainly sought to stay its advance.— *S^eec/^ to 
Farmers' Alliance, Feb., 1887. 

The Poverty of Invention. Heaven was, in the beginning, 
a heavenly city on earth; it is transported to the clouds; and there 
its golden streets and sparkling palaces await the redeemed. This 
is natural; we can only conceive of the best of the spiritual by the 
best we know of the material ; we can imagine no musical instrument 
in the hands of the angels superior to a harp ; no weapon better than 
a sword for the grasp of Gabriel. This disproves not a spiritual 
and superior state; it simply shows the poverty and paucity of our 
poor intellectual apparatus, which, like a mirror, reflects only that 
which is around it, and reflects it imperfectly.— J^rt^waroA'. 

Crystalized. If, then, our form of government is simply 
crystalized justice, our duty is to seek out and strike down injustice 



182 bONNMLLIANA. 

wherever it may appear, or however specious and cunniug inay be 
the mask with which it hides its repulsive features. — Memorial 
Address, 1884. 

The Amekican Flag. 

On, stripe and star ! — On, stripe and star ! 

Pointing the path of the first in war. 

Where thou art seen is Victory seen ; 

Where thou hast been hath glory been ; 

And the mighty stars and the grand blue sea 

And the red blood of triumph are met in thee. — 1853. 
Legend and History. One hundred years ago the highest 
faith was placed in written history, while the utmost contempt was 
felt for all legends. Whatever had been written down was regarded 
as certainly true ; whatever had not been written down was neces- 
sarily false. But as time rolled on it was seen that the greater part 
of history was simply recorded legends, while all the rest represented 
the passions of factions, the hates of sects, or the servility and 
venality of historians. Men perceived that the common belief of 
antiquity, as expressed in universal tradition, was much more likely 
to be true than the written opinions of a few prejudiced individuals, 
— Ragnarok. 

The Barefooted Christ. Why did they not listen to me? 
Why did rich and poor alike mock me 1 If they had not done so, 
this dreadful cup might have been averted from their lips. But it 
would seem as if faith and civilization were incompatible. Christ 
was only possible in a barefooted world; and the few who wore 
shoes murdered him. What dark perversity was it in the blood of 
the race that made it wrap itself in misery, like a garment, while all 
nature was happy ? — Coesar^s Column. 

God's Law. G-od wipes out injustice with suffering ; wrong with 
blood ; sin with death. You can no more get beyond the reach of 
His hand than you can escape from the planet. — Ccesar^s Column. 

The Destruction of Mankind. And how did mankind come 
to be reduced to a handful ? If men grew, in the first instance, out 
of bestial forms, mindless and speechless, they would have propa- 
gated and covered the world as did the bear and the wolf. But after 
they had passed this stage, and had so far developed as to be human 



J^XTIUCTS AM) SKLKCTIONS. 183 

in speech and brain, some cause reduced them again to a handful. 
What was it? Something, say these legends, some fiery object, 
some blazing beast or serpent, which appeared in the heavens, which 
filled the world with conflagrations, and which destroyed the human 
race, except a remnant, who saved themselves in caverns or in the 
water; and from this seed, this handful, mankind again replenished 
the earth, and spread gradually to all the continents and the islands 
of the sea. — Bagnarok. 

Freemen akd Slaves. The difference between freemen and 
slaves is that the first govern themselves ; the last are governed by 
some one else. The ballot-box, intelligentl} used, can alone save 
the freemen from becoming slaves. Three-fourths of all the ills men 
suffer arise from misgovernment. It follows, as a matter of course, 
that whatever class rules the country will rule it for its own advant- 
age. If the people rule, the people will prosper; if those who live 
on the people rule, they will certainly grow rich at the expense of 
the rest of the population.— Address of State Farmers^ Alliance, 1SS6. 

I Political Equality Not Social Equality. Pohtical equality 
does not imply social equahty, or physical equality, or race equahty. 
When you go to the ballot-box to vote you find a group assembled 
of white men, originally of different nationalities— Yankee, French, 
German, Irish, Scotch — of different complexions, conditions, mental 
power, education and knowledge. No two are ahke ; no two are 
equal in any respect, and yet they all peacefully unite in expressing 
their political preferences. The right to participate in the govern- 
ment, in a republic, is like the right to breathe the atmosphere. 
No man feels degraded because the air he inhales has already passed 
through the lungs of his fellow-man, differing from him in every re- 
spect and condition. We must all breathe to live, and we must all 
vote if the republic is to live. Because a man votes beside me at 
the polhug-place, it does not follow that I must take him into my 
house, or wed him to my daughter, any more than those results fol- 
low because w^e breathe the same air. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Mississippi Valley. When 1 say the fall of Vicksburg— 
what was it ? The opening of the Mississippi valley. And what is 
the Mississippi valley'^ The nation; for all the rest are mere 
suburbs.— ^Sp^^-c// at Meeting of Army of the Tennessee, Aug. 14, 1884. 



184 DONNELLIANA. 

The Beains Take the Crop. You should, therefore, devote 
all your leisure time and thought to the great questions of govern- 
ment ; that is to say, to the questions which involve your own pros- 
perity. Of what avail is it to economize and toil if some cunning 
knave, who toils not, is to reap the fruits of your industry ? The 
most valuable crop you can raise on the farm is brains. If the 
brains are not inside the fence, they will be outside of it, and wher- 
ever they are the crop goes with them. — Address of State Farmers' 
Alliance, 1886. 

The American^ Beauty. 

Not the great, gaudy presence and rude charms 
That kept, of old, contending camps in arms. 
But delicate in figure, face and mind. 
Formed to enchant and civilize mankind. 
All the fine attributes of soul to move. 
And fill the measure of fastidious love. — 1855. 

What the Bied Thi:n"ks. The female bird says to herself, 
^' The time is propitious, and now, of my own free will, and nnder 
the operation of my individual judgment, I will lay a nestful of eggs 
and hatch a brood of children. " But it is unconscious that it is 
moved by a physical necessity, which has constrained all its ances- 
tors from the beginning of time, and which will constrain all its pos- 
terity to the end of time ; that its will is nothing more than an 
expression of age, development, sunlight, food, and " the skyey 
influences. " If it were otherwise it would be in the power of a gen- 
eration to arrest the life of a race. — Ragnarok. 

Happy Nature. A whale spouted. Happy nature ! How cun- 
ningly were the wet, sliding waves accommodated to that smooth 
skin and those nerves which rioted in the play of the tumbling 
waters. A school of dolphins leaped and gamboled, showing their 
curved backs to the sun in sudden glimpses; a vast family; merry, 
social, jocund, abandoned to happiness. The gulls flew about us as 
if our ship was indeed a larger bird, and I thought of the poet's 
lines wherein he describes — 

" The gray gull balanced on its bow-like wings, 
Between two black waves, seeking where to dive." 

— Ccesafs Column. 



KXmACTtS AND SELBCTIONS. IS.') 

LuxATics. A little while ago and the Greenbackers were dc- 
nomioated " lunatics, " for demanding the remonetization of silver. 
Who are the " lunatics " now ? Silver is partially remonetized, gold 
has fallen, bonds have risen, and some faint glimpses of pros- 
perity brighten the horizon. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The True Pkinciple of Recoxstruction. The purpose of 
government is the happiness of the people, therefore of the whole 
people. A government cannot be half a republic and half a des- 
potism — a republic just and equable to one class of its citizens, a 
despotism cruel and destructive to another class ; it must become 
either all despotism or all republic. If you make it all republic the 
future is plain. All evils will correct themselves. Temporary dis- 
orders will subside ; the path will lie wide open before every man, 
and every step and every hour will take him farther away from error 
and darkness. Give the right to vote and you give the right to aid 
in making the laws ; the laws, being made by all, will be for the ben- 
efit of all ; the improvement and advancement of each member of 
the community will be the imj)rovement and advancement of the 
whole community. — Speech in Congress. 

The Wolfish Natures. Every honest man, who perceives 
abuses in the world, should be a preacher, in the broad sense of the 
word. There are, of course, wolfish natures, whose only instinct is 
to sneak and leap and devour. To these men mercy is a mockery, 
and humanity but another name for food. They are the cannibals 
of civihzed life, and live upon their fellows. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Prayers of the Heathei^-. Religions may perish ; the 
name of the Deity may change with race and time and tongue; but 
He can never despise such noble, exalted, eloquent appeals from the 
hearts of millions of men, repeated through thousands of genera- 
tions, as these Aztec prayers have been. Whether addressed to 
Tezcathpoca, Zeus, Jove, Jehovah or God, they pass alike direct 
from the heart of the creature to the heart of the Creator ; they are 
of the threads that tie together matter and ^^uit.—Ragnarok. 

Stand by jovv. Ow:n' Mex. There is another point we would urge 
upon you : In war they employ sharpshooters to pick off" the officers. 
If they can kill the generals, the army is half defeated. In politics 
itis the same: they fire at the leaders. If any man is faithful to 



m i)OnNELLiANA. 

jou he will be bitterly denounced. If he is corrupt, he will b6 
praised by those who buy him. The moment he sells out the sharp- 
shooters are withdrawn and the fire ceases. Be suspicious of any of 
your own men who are praised by your enemies. — Address of State 
Alliance, 1886. 

The True Woman. Why should we not enjoy the sunshine, and 
that glorious light, brighter than all sunshine — the love of woman f 
For Grod alone, who made woman — the true woman — knows the 
infinite capacities for good which He inclosed within her soul. And 
I don't believe one bit of that orthodox story. I think Eve ate the 
apple to obtain knowledge, and Adam devoured the core because be 
w.as hnngrj.—Ccesafs Column. 

As Accommodating Rise of Land. Why should the ice-sheet 
move southward? Because, say the " glacialists, " the lands of the 
northern parts of Europe and America were then elevated fifteen 
hundred feet higher than at present, and this gave the ice a suffi- 
cient descent. But what became of that elevation afterward? Why, 
it went down again. It had accommodatingly performed its func- 
tion, and then resumed its old place ! — Ragnarok. 

A Question of the Future Life. Does every man, capable 
of goodness in this world, continue to do good, with increased force, 
forever after? — Journal, 1885. 

No Substitute for Brains. If a man stands by you, stand by 
him. In every county there are those who, by advocating your in- 
terests, have made themselves targets for the arrows of calumny. 
Other things being equal, these are the men for you to send to the 
Legislature. ' Those who have ably advocated your cause before the 
people will best advocate it in the Legislature. You want earnest, 
honest men, and no blockheads. It is not sufficient to elect a man 
who will vote right; he must be able to plan right, speak right, fight 
right. There is no substitute for brains. Money needs tools. The 
people want men. — Address of State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 

Public Honors. I have already said that I am not naturally am- 
bitious. The scrambles and squabbles of pubhc life have no charms 
for me. I have no respect for that kind of honor which belongs not 
to the man himself, but to the place he occupies, and which leaves 
him as soon as he is sundered from the place. It seems to me to be 



EXTBACTS AND sELECflONS. isf 

the smallest and the most unsubstantial of all human virtues. Who 
can recall the long list of Roman consuls? And yet they were 
mightier than kings in their day — dreaded to the uttermost limits 
of the civilized world. But they are gone, while the memory of 
Homer, of Plato, of Socrates is still fresh upon the tongues of men, 
and they stand out, limned upon the background of the ages, as dis- 
tinctly as the living men of our own era. — Doctor Huguet. 

The Antlered Tree. 
The sun, touching with its light 
The rough black antlers of one mighty tree, 
• Uplifted, 'mid green leaves. — m-^i. 
A Tessellated Pavement. If we were to find, under the 
dehris of Pompeii, a grand tessellated pavement, representing one 
of the scenes of the Iliad, but shattered by an earthquake, its 
fragments dislocated and piled one upon the top of another, it would 
be our duty and our pleasure to seek, by following the clew of the 
pictui-e, to rearrange the fragments so as to do justice to the great 
design of its author; and to silence, at the same time, the cavils of 
those who could see in its shocked and broken form nothing but a 
subject for mirth and ridicule. In the same way, following the clew 
afibrded by the legends of mankind and the revelations of science, 
I shall suggest a reconstruction of this venerable and most ancient 
work. If the reader does not accept my conclusions, he will, at 
least, I trust, appreciate the motives with which I make the attempt. 
— Bagnarok. 

THE POWER OF GOD. 

I looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that 
endless procession of shining worlds; at that illimitable expanse of 
silence. And I thought of those vast gaps and lapses of manless 
time, when all these starry hosts unrolled and marshaled themselves 
before the attentive eyes of God, and it had not yet entered into 
His heart to create that swarming, writhing, crawhng, contentious 
mass we call humanity. And I said to myself, " Why should a God 
condescend to such a work as man? " 

And yet, again, I felt that one grateful heart, that darted out 
the living line of its love and adoration from this dark and per- 
turbed earth, up to the shining throne of the Great InteUigence, 



188 DOy^A^J^LLlANA . 

must be of inore moment aDd esteem iu the universe than milliotis 
of tons of mountains — yea, than a wilderness of stars. For matter 
is but the substance with which God works ; while thought, love, 
conscience and consciousness are parts of God himself. We think, 
therefore we are divine; we pray, therefore we are immortal. 

Part of God ! The awful, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible 
God. His terrible hand swirls, with unresting power, yonder innum- 
erable congregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, 
with tender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint 
with rainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly. 

I could have wept over man, but I remembered that God lives 
beyond the stars. — Ccesar^s Column. 

THE SILVER QUESTION SUMMARIZED. 

Besolved, That silver coin constitutes one-half the real money 
of the world; that it has been recognized as money since the time 
of Abraham; that it is named in the Constitution of the United 
States as legal tender money ; that to abolish it now throughout the 
world would be to reduce the volume of metallic money one-half, 
thereby doubhng the purchasing power of gold and decreasing in 
like ratio the value of all forms of property, including labor. 

Besolved, That we denounce any such attempt as the result of a 
vast European conspiracy against human nature; a scheme to 
double the mortgage and halve the farm ; to increase the national 
debt and decrease the power of the people to pay it; to intensify 
the struggle for food and life among the swarming milhons, that a 
few thousands may riot in wasteful abundance ; in short, to build 
up that meanest and crudest of all aristocracies, a moneyed aris- 
tocracy, at the expense of the farmer reduced to a peasant, and the 
workman reduced to a slave. 

Besolved, That we demand of the Congress of the United States 
the coinage of silver on precisely the same terms with gold. — Ad- 
dress of the State Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 

THE GREAT ISSUE. 

The issue upon which all other issues hinge to-day is whether 
the condition of wretchedness and poverty to which the great ma- 
jority of mankind are condemned is or is not irremediable? Is the 
productive capacity of the earth sufiacient to give all its children an 



EXTUACTS AND SELECTIONS, 189 

abundance? Do the want, the sorrow and the sin with which the 
world now reeks spring from the laws, or are they inevitable under 
any form of government ? Can human intelligence, which is gradu- 
ally converting all the forces of nature into servants, yet solve the 
problem, so that every mind will be educated, every stomach filled, 
and every back clothed, in all Christendom? 

We believe these questions will yet be answered in the affirma- 
tive, and that a republic is simply a stepping-stone to these grand 
results. That way the march of civilization lies, and that is what 
the spirit of Christianity means. The day will come when our pos- 
terity will regard this age, with its swarming, sufiering, struggling, 
starving multitudes, as little better than an organized barbarism. — 
TJie Anti- Monopolist. 

The People's Party. I say that God does not intend that this 
august civihzation shall go down under the brutal feet of a mob of 
plutocrats. The same Divine Power which saved us, in our infancy, 
from the overwhelming strength of the mother country, which 
brought victory, union, peace and reconcihation out of our terrible 
civil war, does not intend that this nation shall be destroyed. He 
does not intend that our producing classes shall be reduced to 
servitude and the wheels of civilization turned backward, and old- 
world conditions established here on the face of this new continent. 
— Speech to Cincinnati Convention, May 20, 1891. 

The Origix of the Grayel. Moreover, if the waves made 
these great deposits, they must have picked up the material 
composing them either from the shores of the sea or the beds of 
streams. And when we consider the vastness of the drift-deposits, 
extending, as they do, over continents, with a depth of hundreds of 
feet, it would puzzle us to tell where were the sea-beaches or rivers 
on the globe that could produce such inconceivable quantities of 
gravel, sand and clay. The production of gravel is limited to a 
small marge of the ocean, not usually more than a mile wide, where 
the waves and the rocks meet. If we suppose the whole shore of 
the ocean around the northern half of America to be piled up with 
gravel five hundred feet thick, it would, go but a httle way to form 
the immense deposits which stretch from the Arctic Sea to Pata- 
g( >n i a. — Baqnarol-. 



190 BONNELLIANA. 

Tbe Cukse of the Age. The great curse of the whole 
system of thought which dominates and afflicts our country is, that 
man is nothing and property everything. In the eye of legislation a 
single bank outweighs a county. Nobody thinks it of the shghtest 
moment that milUons suffer for want of sufiflcient food ; that hundreds 
of thousands of energetic and worthy merchants are bankrupted ; that 
hundreds of thousands of workmen and mechanics are turned out to 
tramp country roads like exiles and wild beasts, starving and dan- 
gerous; but the cry goes on, "Hard money, contraction, specie- 
payments, " and other catch-words to tickle the ears of fools. — The 
Anti-Monopolist. 

The Beauity of the Wokld. My soul rose up on wings and 
swam in the ether like a swallow ; and I thanked God that he had 
given us this majestic, this surpassing world, and had placed within 
us the dehcate sensibility and capabihty to enjoy it. In the presence 
of such things death— annihilation — seemed to me impossible, 
and I exclaimed aloud: 

' ' Hast thou not heard 
That thine existence, hero on earth, is but 
The dark and narrow section of a life 
Which was with God long ere the sun was lit, 
And shall he yet, when all the hold, bright stars 
Are dark as death-dust ? " 

— CcBsar^s Column. 

The Way It Wokks. One man invents a swindle; he lives 
henceforth in ease and idleness; while ten thousand men toil and 
moil, in heat and cold, to pay the interest on his capitalized rascal- 
ity. And when both parties die, the knave transmits his bonds and 
stocks to his children, while the honest men leave to their posterity 
a legacy of life-long poverty, hardship, suffering and d^^ht.— Ad- 
dress of State Farmers^ Alliance, 18S6. 

Icebergs did not Cause the Dkift. It is simply impossible 
that the Drift was caused by icebergs. I repeat, when they floated 
clear of the rocks, of course they would not mark them ; when the 
water was too shallow to permit them to float at all, and so move 
onward, of course they- would not mark them. The striations 
could occur only when the water was just deep enough to float the 
berg, and not deep enough to float the berg clear of the rocks; 
and but a small part of the bottom of the sea could fulfill these 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 191 

conditions. Moreover, when the waters were six thousand feet deep 
in New England, and four thousand feet deep in Scotland, and over 
the tops of the Rocky Mountains, where was the rest of the world, 
and the life it contained ? — Ragnarok. 

The Dark-Skinned Races. And yet many an Egyptian 
Pharaoh had taken to his breast, and covered with his crown, beau- 
ties that were many shades darker than the skin I looked upon. 
Caesar, and Cicero, and Pompey, and Cato, had loved and wedded 
women more dusky of hue than this fair creature. In the abandon 
of our pride over the whiteness of our skin, bleached by thousands 
of years of northern storms and ice and snow, we forget that the 
greatest part of mankind, including all the great nations of antiquity, 
Egyptians, Hindoos, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, were much 
darker than ourselves; that it is only of late years that the pale-faced 
Goth is leading the advance of the world, and that, if we take out 
of the accumulations of the past those arts, inventions, works and 
thoughts derived from people as shadowy in hue as our own 
mulattoes, there would be little left for our civilization to brag of. — 
Doctor Huguet. 

Equal Rights. The farmer's dollar is just as good as the rail- 
road man's dollar, and the farmer, if the Declaration of Independence 
amounts to anything, is the political equal of the railroad-builder. 
When the farmer's dollar and the railroad man's dollar bear the 
same rate of interest, this will really be a country of free and equal 
people. Now the farmer's dollar pays httle or no interest, while the 
railroad-builder collects a high rate of interest on his dollar, and an 
equally high rate of interest on two or three other dollars which he 
never owned, and the farmer pays it all. — Address of State Farmers^ 
Alliance, 1886. 

CESAR'S HEAD. 

*' My God," said Max, '^ it is Caesar's head!" 

I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I 
had before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It 
stood out as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light 
of the burning house upon that background of darkness. I could 
see the glazed and dusty eyes, the protruding tongue, the great 
lower jaw hanging down in hideous fashion, and from the thick, bull- 
like neck were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood. 



192 DONNELLIANA. 

^' It is the first iu-stinct of such mobs," said Max, quietly, '' to 
suspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Caesar, aud then 
came after me. . When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed 
in their suspicions; they believe that I am carrying away their 
treasure." 

I could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. It fascinated 
me. It waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. It seemed 
to me to be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of 
that terrible^cene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. The 
protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable 
horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful features, 
by the towering conflagration. — Ccesar^s Column. 

THE FALL OF MAN. 

How petty, how almost insignificant, how schoolboy-like are 
our historians, with their little rolls of parchment under their arms, 
containing their lists of Enghsh, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian 
kings and queens, in the presence of such stupendous facts as these ! 

Good reader, your mind shrinks back from such conceptions, of 
course. But can you escape the facts by shrinking back? Are 
they not there? Are they not all of a piece — Job, Ovid, Eama, 
Ragnarok, Genesis, the Aztec legends; the engraved ivory tablets 
of the caves, the pottery, the carved figures of pre- glacial Europe, 
the pottery-strata of Louisiana under the Drift, the copper and iron 
implements, the brick pavements and cisterns, and this coin, dragged 
up from a well-hole in Illinois? 

And what do they af&rm ? 

That this catastrophe was indeed the fall of man. 

Think what a fall ! 

From comfort to misery, from plowed fields to the thistles and 
the stones, from sunny and glorious days in a stormless land to the 
awful trials of the Drift Age ; the rains, the cold, the snow, the ice, 
the incessant tempests, the darkness, the poverty, the coats of hides, 
the cave-life, the cannibalism, the Stone Age. 

Here was a fall m^QQ^.—Bagnaroh. 

Sqtjeezikg Out a Mas', Somebody says- that Wheelock wrote 
those Wilder letters. Shouldn't wonder ; they sound like him . If you 
were to draw Wheelock between your finger and thumb you would 



EXTUA (JT>; A XD SELECTIONS. 1 93 

squeeze out of him just such a pile of slang- whangiug adverbs and 
adjectives as the foregoing, and there would be nothing left of him 
but a small residuum of plunder and an ill-flavored skin. — The 
Anti-3fono2)olisf. 

Large Legislatures. We doubt if true economy demands the 
reduction of the Legislature, especially the House. A small body is 
easily bought, and it is bought always at the expense of the people, 
who in the passage of one bill may lose enough to pay the expense 
of running the Legislature for five years. The New England States 
have found it safe to keep the House very large, in some cases five 
times as large as our own. It is not so important to pass a multitude 
of bills as to prevent the passage of those that plunder the people. — 
The Anti-MonopoUst. 

The Circus Procession. There are really but two parties in 
this State to-day — the people and their plunderers. The only issue 
is: Shall the people keep the fruits of their own industry, or shall 
the thieves carry them away? The clamors of the contending 
political parties are, too often, hke the bands and banners of a cir- 
cus procession, which absorb the attention of the populace, and 
draw them to the front windows, while the thieves, who accompany 
the show, are robbing the houses from the rear. — Address of State 
Farmers^ Alliance, 1886. 

The Conservatives. God has greatly blessed us and all our 
people. There were a few conservatives who strenuously objected 
at first to our reforms; but we mildly suggested to them that if they 
were not happy, and desired it, we would transfer them to the out- 
side world, where they could enjoy the fruits of the unhallowed sys- 
tems they praised so much. They are now the most vigorous sup- 
porters of the new order of things. And this is one of the merits of 
your true conservative. If you can once get him into the right 
course he will cling to it as tenaciously as he formerly clung to the 
wrong one. They are not naturally bad men ; their brains are sim- 
ply Incapable of suddenly adjusting themselves to new conceptions. 
— CcBsafs Column. 

Our National Motto. The English have a motto : '' God and 
my rights. " The motto of this country promises to become : '' God 
and my dollars. ''—The Ant i -Monopolist. 



194 DONNELLIANA. 

The Supply of Gold. " The amount of gold iu the world at 
this time is estimated at seven railhons. And yet we are having an 
awful tussle to get a few millions corralled iu our treasury for 
resumption purposes. The world's stock of gold is only equal to a 
block seventeen feet high, twenty-eight feet wide and fifty-six feet 
long. " — ExcJmnge. 

Think of the entire business, progress, growth and prosperity of 
the whole human family chained to that block of gold, the size of 
an ordinary meeting-house ! —The Ant i- Monopolist. 

A Difficulty. It too often happens that the honest men are 
impractical, and the practical men are rascals.— /Speec/^, 1884. 

The Income Tax. The old G-reeks had a law that whenever 
a man's fortune exceeded a given hmit, he was obhged to build a 
ship, or equip a regiment, or do some other work for the state. This 
was also the theory that underlay the income tax law, passed during 
the war. Men of small fortunes paid nothing, while the tax was 
increased in proportion to the individual's income — he that had 
most paying most. Bat one of the first steps of the money-power 
was to abohsh this law, and thus iucrease the burdens of the poorer 
and middle classes.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 

The True Conservative. The Rev. Sydney Smith once said 
that there was a kind of men into whom you could not introduce a 
new idea without a surgical operation. He might have added that 
when you had once forced an idea into the head of such a man, you 
could not deliver him of it without instruments. — Bagnarok. 

A Spasmodic and Suspicious Outburst. Sir, I beheve it to 
be one of the spasmodic outbursts of the gentleman [Elihu Wash- 
burne] which we have witnessed here, Congress after Congress. 
Why, sir, I can look back and recall how, at the opening of almost 
every Congress, the gentleman has risen here, and, if the word was 
parliamentary, I would say, howled, against the railroad communi- 
cation between New York and this city, and demanded an air-hne 
railroad, splitting the very heavens with his outcries. Suddenly 
there followed a dead calm, 

"And silence, like a poultice, came 
To heal the wounds of sound," 

and we heard no more upon the subject until the next Congress met. 
— From the Washlnirne Speech in Congress, Mriy ,?, 1868. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 195 

The Claws. The capacity to do evil is rarely united with the 
desire to do good. God gives the claws to the beasts.— Speech, 1884- 

The Arabs. But, after a time, we catch sight of the blue and 
laughing waters of the Mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky 
islands. This is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the 
great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the 
eye can reach. We pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuf- 
fling, patient camels, and its dark attendants. They have heard 
nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world. 
They pray to Allah and Mahomet, and are happy. The hot, blue, 
cloudless sky rises in a great dome above their heads; their food is 
scant and rude, but in their brains there burn not those wild fevers 
of ambition which have driven mankind to such frenzies and hor- 
rors. They live and die as their ancestors did, ten thousand years 
ago— unchangeable as the stars above their heads; and these are 
even as they shone clear and bright when the Chaldean shepherds 
first studied the outlines of the constellations and marked the path- 
ways of the wandering planets. — Ccesafs Column. 

THE BOOK OF JOB. 

And so, stumbhng through these texts, falling over mistransla- 
tions and misconceptions, pushing aside the accumulated dust of 
centuried errors, we lay our hands upon a fossil that lived and 
breathed when time \\;as new : we are carried back to ages not only 
before the flood, but to ages that were old when the flood came upon 
tlie earth. 

Here Job lives once more; the fossil breathes and palpitates 
— hidden from the fire of heaven, deep in his cavern. Covered witli 
bruises and burns from the foiling debris of the comet, surrounded 
by his trembling fellow-refugees, while chaos rules without and liope 
has fled the earth, we hear Job, bold, defiant, unshrinking, pourin-- 
forth the protest of the human heart against the cruelty of nature; 
appealing from God's awful deed to the sense of God's eternal 
justice. 

We go out and look at the gravel -heap— worn, rounded, ancient, 
but silent, the stones he before us. They have no voice. Wo \wv\\ 
to this volume, and here is their voice, here is their story; here avo 
have the very thoughts men thought — men like ourselves, hut 



196 DONNELLIANA. 

sorely tried — when that gravel was falling upon a desolated world. 

And all this buried, unrecognized, in the sacred book of a race 
and a TQligion.—Itagnarok. 

The Union Pacific Railroad — A Statesman Described. 
But he says I voted for this because I held an annual pass over 
the road. Ah! Mr. Speaker, this is almost too much for human con- 
tempt to reach. An annual pass upon a road that I have never 
seen ; over which I have never traveled a mile ; over which I do not 
expect to travel until that great day when a line of railroad commu- 
nication shall extend unbroken from New York to San Francisco! 
On that day, standing on the Pacific coast, in sight of the Golden 
Gate, looking back over that mighty work, wedding in everlasting 
marriage the mightiest oceans of the globe, spanning the continent 
as God's great bow of promise spans the heavens, the glory of our 
nation, the marvel of our age, it will then, Mr. Speaker, be a conso- 
lation to know that that mighty work has been resisted and opposed 
by every blatant, loud-voiced, big-chested, small-headed, bitter- 
heavted demagogue in all this land. — The Washburne Speech in 
Congress, May 2, 1868. 

What a Eepublic Means. And what does this form of gov- 
ernment mean? This: — the advancement of mankind; the lifting 
up of the masses; absolute justice in the laws; and the wiping out 
of all impediments that may hinder the progress of the people. — 
Memorial Address, 1884. 

Sound Advice. If you would lose your friend, make him your 
creditor. — Journal, 1885. 

THE NORTH AND SOUTH COMPARED. 

It must be admitted that our people are a big-hearted, hospitable 
race, who can never do too much for those they respect or love, or, 
I might add, too little for those they dislike. Their loves and hates 
partake of the heat of their summer suns ; all their opinions are 
convictions ; all their feelings passions. But the strong sense of 
personal honor has survived here, while it seems to be dying out 
under the blight of the commercial, trading spirit of the North. 
Beyond Mason and Dixon's line politics are an individual grab for 
profits; in the South they are devotion to ideas and theories of 
statecraft, which may not be correct, but are always respectable 



EXTRACTS AM) SKLIA'TIONS. 197 

from their sincerity. One of the most beautiful traits of Si)uihern 
character is its fiery devotion to the great men of its section. The 
South stands by them with passionate partisanship, exaggerating 
their best qualities, and ignoring their weak ones. It honors them 
living, and worships them dead. In the North to be a great man i.^ 
simply to invite unsympathetic criticism of every detail of the 
individual's career and character; to become the conspicuous target 
for limitless abuse and insult while living, and to receive halting, 
grudging praise when dead, with the promise of a monument which 
is rarely built. The South regards genius with grateful eyes lifted 
to heaven ; the North, with its nose in the air, to smell out the faults 
of its victim. — Doctor Huguet. 

England. England, the land where the Gulf-stream empties its 
stomach. — Journal, 188.2. 

Max's Power Limited. But, I said to myself, while God 
permits man to wreck himself, he denies him the power to destroy 
the world. The grass covers the graves ; the flowers grow in the 
furrows of the cannon balls; the graceful foliage festoons with 
blossoms the ruins of the prison and the torture-chamber ; and the 
corn springs alike under the foot of the helot or the yeoman. — 
Ccesar^s Column. 

An Advice to the Clergymen. It would be a great deal 
better if these ministers would study the questions of government 
and finance which underlie the prosperity of the people and give 
sound advice to their people thereon, instead of praying to God to 
aid them. It is recorded that, when the wagoner of old found his 
wagon stuck in the mud, he besought the god Hercules to help him 
out, and Hercules replied by telling him to " put his own shoulder 
to the wheel." " God helps those who help themselves. " The ca- 
lamities of this country were not produced by the Almighty ; they are 
the work of knaves, who have absorbed the products of the people's 
industry into their own i30ckets by cunning laws. The remedy is to 
suppress the knaves and repeal the laws. — The Ant i- Monopolist. 

Dr. Ox's Hobby. Who shall say how often the characteristics 
of our atmosphere have been affected by accessions from extra- 
terrestrial sources, resulting in conflagrations or pestilences, in fail- 
ures of cropS; and in famines? Who shall say how far great revolu- 



1 OS D ONNELLIA IStA . 

tioDs and wars and other perturbations of humanity have been due' 
to similar modifications'? There is a world of philosophy in that 
curious story, "Dr. Ox's Hobby," wherein we are told how he 
changed the mental traits of a village of Hollanders by increasing 
the amount of oxygen in the air they breathed.-— i^a^/waroA'. 

VicioiJSNESS. You may set two plants side by side in the same 
soil — one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth, while 
the other will gather, froDa the same nurture, nothing but sweetness 
and perfume. 

" ' For virtue, as it never will be moved, 

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven; 
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, 
Will sate itself in a celestial bed. 
And prey on garbage.' " 

— CcBsar^s Column. 

Popular Ixtelligekce. Let the great work go on. Its tasks 
are but half completed. Let it go on until ignorance is driven 
beyond our remotest borders. This is the noblest of all human la- 
bors. This will build deep and wide and imperishable the foimda- 
tions of our government; this will raise up a structure that shall 
withstand the slow canker of time and the open assaults of violence. 
The freedom of the people resting upon the intelhgence of the peo- 
ple! Who shall destroy a nation founded upon this rock? — Speech 
in Congress, Feb. 1, 1866. 

Speing. 
Like a child's voice amid the deep w^oods heard, 
When the sun browns the blushing breast of spring, 
And the light laugh walks, 'mid the greeting vales, 
Or peoples with its ringing chime the trees, 
Or flings its fragment-beauties to the rocks, 
Till they grow echoes in the crevices. — 1850. 

Robberies Under Patent Laws. Take, for instance, the 
injustice practiced on us under the patent laws. A sewing-machine 
costs for the work and material $12. We pay $70 for it. The same 
machines arc exported to Europe and sold for $32, after paying 
freight across the Atlantic. I found in the Belfast News of Decem- 
ber 4, 1872, an advertisement of the Singer sewing-machine for 
^6 105— about $32.50 of our money. We pay the difference of 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 109 

rio.niy $40, under our i);il(Mit laws, fiir itciuo- fj,c most pat i cut (i ml 
l/ul/ihic fools that ever pretended to a capncity for self-government. 
AlcCormick gave evidence, in a law-suit recently, that his reapers 
cost $37 to manufacture. We pay nearly $200 for them. The 
threshing-machine, for which we pay $700, could, I am informed, be 
built for $150. And so of all other implements. — Speech to Gran- 
gers, 1873. 

Our Ixxer Self. It is customary with us all to think that our 
intellect is our self, and that we are only what we think; but there 
are in the depths of our nature feelings, emotions, qualities of the 
soul, with which the mere intelligence has nothing to do; and 
which, when they rise up, like an enraged elephant from the jungle, 
scatter all the conventionnlities of our training and all the smooth 
and automaton-like operations of our minds to the winds. — Ccesafs 
Column. 

The Funeral of an Angel. Her tears burst forth afresh. 
I was shocked — inexpressibly shocked. True, it was joy to know 
she would hve; but to think of that noble instrument of grace and 
joy and melody silenced forever ! It was hke the funeral of an 
angel ! God, in the infinite diversity of His creation, makes so few 
such voices —so few such marvelous adjustments of those vibrating 
chords to the capabilities of the air and the human sense and the 
infinite human soul that dwells behind the sense — and all to be the 
spoil of a ruftian's knife ! — C^vsafs Column. 

The Tempest. Did you ever observe the distressed look of 
the trees assaulted by a tempest ? Their leaves are flattened down 
like the ears of a flying rabbit. — Journal, 1884. 

Sensuality. And your gospel of Love. What is it but beast- 
liness? Like the old Greeks and Romans, and all undeveloped a?:- 
tiquity, you deify the basest traits of the fleshly organism ; you 
exalt an animal incident of life into the end of life. Tou drive Oa"- 
of the lofty temples of the soul the noble and pure aspirations, the 
great charities, the divine thoughts, which should float there forever 
on the pinions of angels; and you cover the floor of the temple 
with crawling creatures, toads, lizards, vipers — groveling instincts, 
base appetites, leprous sensualities, that befoul the walls of the 
house with their snail-hke markings^ and climb, and climb, until 



200 DONNELLIANA. 

they look out of the very windows of the soul with such repellant 
and brutish eyes that real love withers and shrinks at the sight, 
and dies like a blasted flower. — GcBsar^s Column. 

The Epitok's Legs. Hy B 's legs are so long that when- 
ever he approaches a subject he puts his foot in it. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

The Nohthmen. And I said to myself: " This is the stuff of 
which was formed the masterful race which overran the world under 
the names of a dozen different peoples. Ice and snow made the 
tough fiber, mental and physical, which the hot sun of southern 
climes afterward melted into the viciousness of more luxurious na- 
tions. Man is scourged into greatness by adversity, and leveled into 
mediocrity by prosperity. This little fellow, whose groans die be- 
tween his set teeth, has in him the blood of the Vikings." — Ccesafs 
Cohmin. 

The Conservatism of Unthinkingness. The conservatism 
of unthinkingness is one of the potential forces of the world. It 
lies athwart the progress of mankind like a colossal mountain-chain, 
chilling the atmosphere on both sides of it for a thousand miles. 
The Hannibal who would reach the eternal city of Truth, on the 
other side of these Alps, must fight his way over ice and hew his 
way through rocks. — Bagnarok. 

RAILROAD COMPETITION. 

The people have built the railroads of the West by their land 
grants, and their traffic sustains them. They recognize the value of 
the roads ; they are not inimical to them. But they feel that the same 
com]oetition. should exist between railroads that exists between 
blacksmiths, carpenters, grocers and dry-goods merchants. What 
would the people of a town think if their merchants held a public 
meeting to pool their i:)rofits and i)at up the price of their commodi- 
ties fifty -per cent ? There would be a riot in that town. And yet 
W€ sit patiently by and see, year after year, in our newspapers, re- 
ports of great conventions of the railroad men to prevent competi- 
tion, to pool earnings, and keep up the cost of transportation of our 
productions. The impudence of the thing is as colossal as is the 
injustice. Vainly, it has been said, is the snare of the fowler set in 



J^X TliA CTS A Nl) SELECTIONS. 20 1 

the^igiit of the bird; but here the fowler calls the attention of the 
bird to his little game, and the bird is rather pleased with it. 

We are entitled to competition. If one railroad can carry cheaper 
than another we are entitled to that lower rate, on our wheat, and 
corn, and pork, and dry goods, and groceries. It means higher prices 
for our commodities and lower prices for what we buy; it means 
more money in our pockets; more wealth in our community ; more 
l)rosperity for farmer, merchant and artisan ; more home comfort 
and a higher civilization. — Speech at Glencoe, 1887. 

FIRING JACKASSES. 

In the C'ongressioual campaign of 1884, Governor Donnelly's 
opponents brought a number of efficient speakers into the field 
against him, and at last William G. Le Due " took the stump, " and 
denounced Governor Donnelly savagely. He was a very poor speaker, 
however, and every speech he made helped the man he was attack- 
ing. When Governor Donnelly came to reply, before an immense 
meeting in Hastings, where Le Due lived, he told this story, and 
the effect was such that the oiDpositiou withdrew Le Due from the 
contest. Le Due never had an opportunity to retaliate until he 
took the stand, as a witness in the great libel suit, and revengefully 
tried to swear away Governor Donnelly's character. 

" Fellow citizens," said Governor Donnelly, "Major Strait has 
got some able advocates in the field, but, not satisfied with these, he 
has unlimbered Le Due, who is now exploding all over this district. I 
feel a good deal as the Indian did in one of our frontier wars. 

" A party of our soldiers were traveling through an Indian coun- 
try. They broke one of the wheels of the carriage of a small field-piece. 
Not wishing to lose their cannon, the officer in command strapped it 
on the back of a mule. While camping at noon, on a little hill, they 
were surrounded and attacked by an overwhelming force of Indians. 
The issue appeared very doubtful, but they defended themselves 
bravely. In the midst of the battle the captain remembered that 
the field-piece was loaded, and he undertook to fire it off, at the sav- 
ages, from the back of the mule; but the animal was frightened and 
restive from the uproar and the flying bullets and the howling Indi- 
ans, and, just as the gun went off, it wheeled around, and the load 
was discharged over the heads of our own men. But the effect on 
the mule was disastrous. It was standing at the time on the edge of a 



202 DCmKELLIA'NA: 

sleep declivity, aod the rebound of the gun sent it flying and rolling' 
down the hill; heels over head; toward the Indians. These latter took 
to their heels and fled in the wildest panic, and never returned ; 
and the little force of soldiers was saved. 

" A year or two afterward, at a treaty-council, the captain of 
the squad met the chief who had been in command in that attack, 
and he asked him why they all ran away that day, when they so 
greatly outnumbered the whites. 

'' The red man drew himself up to his full stattire, struck his 
naked breast a resounding blow, and said : 

" ' Injun heap brave ! Injun heap brave ! ' 

'' ^Yes, I understand that,' said the captain; ^but what did you 
run away for ? ' 

'' ^ Injun heap brave ! Injun lo 'fraid of little guns or big guns, 
— but when white man fire whole jackasses at Injun, Injun run ! ' 

"Now, fellow -citiz en s, " continued Governor Donnelly, "that 
Indian represents my state of mind exactly. I could stand it as 
long as they brought their great orators against me — I was ^ heap 
"brave' — but when it comes to firing Le Due at me, I feel like with- 
drawing from the campaign. " 

The roars of laughter which followed lasted for several minutes, 
and no politician has ever since had the temerity to put Le Due on 
the stump in the State of Minnesota. 

A QuESTioi!^ OF MouRiSTEES. " A. T. Stcwart left his widow 
the bulk of his immense fortune. His mourners were few, but very 
select. It is said he never gave a promissory note. " — The Citizen. 

Do you mean by this that he had few mourners because he gave 
no promissory notes ? If that is the rule, we would suggest that 
there are some newspaper men in Minnesota who will be more pro- 
foundly lamented, when they pass in their checks, than George 
Washington was.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 

The Adjustment of Values. As a corollary to these prop- 
ositions, we decree that our Congress shall have the right to fix the 
rate of compensation for all forms of labor, so that wages shall never 
fall below a rate that will afford the laborer a comfortable living, 
with a margin that will enable him to provide for his old age. It is 
simply a question of the adjustment of values. This experiment has 
been tried before by different countries, but it was always tried in 



EXTBACTS AM) sELECriONS. 203 

the interest of the employers; the laborers had no voice in the mat- 
ter; and it was the interest of the upper classes to cheapen labor; 
and hence Muscle became a drug and Cunnvig invaluable and 
masterful ; and the process was continued indefinitely until the 
catastrophe came. Now labor has its own branch of our Congress, 
and can defend its rights and explain its necessities.— (7<^.9ar'5 
Column. 

CHEAP TRANSPOKTATION IN 1873. 

In 1866 it cost nineteen cents to carry a bushel of wheat from 
Chicago to New York. 

In 1873 it costs thirty -seven cents — nearly double! 

Why? There are now more railroads to carry the produce and 
more produce to be carried than in 1860. The reason is there is more 
rohbery. 

It costs twenty to twenty-five cents to carry a bushel of wheat 
from any inland town in Minnesota to Milwaukee, say 250 miles. It 
costs the same to carry a bushel of wheat from Milwaukee to Liver- 
pool — 3,000 mileS; as ships go. There it is: 250 miles and 3,000 
m\\Q^, and the cost. of transportation the same! . . . 

In New York in April last there were 2,700,000 bushels of Indian 
corn. It was worth at the market rates in New York $1,620,000. 
How was this divided ? 

The men that raised the corn got $540,000. 

The men that carried the corn got $1,080,000. 

Yet there are 5,525,000 persons engaged in agriculture in the 
United States, and only 200,000 persons engaged in railroading. But 
the 200,000 get two dollars where the five miUions get one dollar. 

The farms of thirteen Western States are worth eleven billions 
of dollars. All the railroads in the United States cost two billions. 
Yet where the farmer gets one dollar for raising his corn the railroad 
gets two dollars for carrying it ! — Speecli to Grangers. 

Human Nature. They knew something of human nature when 
it was written, in the old time : 

" He that is despised and hath a servant is better than he that 
honoreth himself and lack eth bread, "—/o^^mrt/, 1885. 

The Oppositiox to Cheap School Books. And now the gen- 
tle book agent counts out greenbacks in the corner, and the en- 
lightened legislator begins to have doubts whether it is constitu- 



204 DONNELLIANA. 

tional to force a poor man to take a school book for fifty cents when 
his soul fairly languishes to pay $1.50 for ii.~The Anti- Monopolist. 

CLIMATIC CHANGES OF THE WHITE KACE. 

" Is it any more strange,". I continued, " than the fact that the 
reddish-brown Arabs, according to Burckhardt and others, have 
become black in Africa? In fact, equatorial Africa has swallowed 
up scores of hghter-colored races, the Abyssinians, Mandingoes, 
Joloffs, Gallas, etc., and tnrned them all black. Why, we see the 
same physiological effects even in this country: the people of 
malarial regions grow darker in color than those of the colder sec- 
tions; already, in a hundred years, there have developed marked 
differences between the man of Maine and the man of Louisiana; 
there is no mistaking the one for the other. Toucan even observe 
an unlikeness between tbe Canadian and the man of the Ohio 
valley. Some argue that the white race is slowly approximating 
the characteristics of the red man ; this is the more marked in those 
whose ancestors belong to the dark Iberian stock, miscalled Celtic. 
The progress toward the Indian type is so rapid in these that one is 
often inclined to ask, even in the North, whether a dark-skinned, 
lank-haired, black-eyed, lantern-jawed individual, of supposed pure 
European blood, has not a large contribution of the Indian in his 
pedigree. It would almost seem like an ancient type gravitating 
rapidly toward its original, when restored to the original habitat. " 
— Doctor Iluguet. 

The Purposes of Government. We declare in the preamble 
to our constitution that " this government is intended to be merely 
a plain and simple instrument to insure to every industrious citizen 
not only hberty, but an educated mind, a comfortable home, an 
abundant supply of food and clothing, and a pleasant, happy life." 
Are not these the highest objects for which governments can exist? 
And if government, on the old lines, did not yield these results, 
should it not have been reformed so as to do so ? —Cmsar^s Column. 

A Prophecy. But the country and its liberties will not perish. 
As soon as events are plain and startling enough to overwhelm the 
subtle arguments of hired newspapers and politicians, the people 
will rise in one mighty revolution, and not only save the govern- 
ment, but so far reform it as to make such calamities impossible in 



EKTUACTS AND SELECTIONS. 205 

all the fiituie. Liberty may be quietly manacled, but it will not 
perish without a world-shaking convulsion; and when that convul- 
sion comes it will brush away all forms of oppression and injustice, 
not only here, but in the old world.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist, 1874. 

THE RENEWED EAKTH. 

All this means that the fragments and remnants of humanity 
reassemble on the plain of Ida — the plain of Vigrid — where the 
battle was fought. They possess the works of the old civilization, 
represented by Thor's hammer; and the day and night once more 
return after the long midnight blackness. 

And the Vala looks again upon a renewed and rejuvenated 
world : 

" She sees arise 

The second time, 

From the sea. the earth, 

Completely green, 

The cascades fall, 

The eagle soars, 

From lofty mounts 

Pursues its prey." 

It is once more the glorious, the sun-lighted world ; the world of 
flashing seas, dancing streams, and green leaves; with the eagle, 
high above it all, 

" Batting the sunny ceiling of the glohe 
"With his dark wings ; " 
while 

" The wild cataracts leap in glory." 

What history, what poetry, what beauty, what inestimable pic- 
tures of an infinite past have lain hidden away in these Sagas — 
the despised heritage of all the blue-eyed, light-haired races of 
the world ! —Bagnarok. 

How THE Patent Lavts Should be Amended. Moreover, 
they should frame an amendment to the patent laws which would 
fix a limit of reasonable compensation for the inventor, say $100,000; 
he should keep an account in the Patent Office of every machine sold, 
and whenever his profits amounted to that sum, the invention should 
be thrown open to the world. Then we might have manufactories 
of all these implements in our towns, Instead of creating a few 



1>06 DONNELLIANA. 

millionaires, as by the present system of robbery, we should improve 
the condition of the milUons now engaged in agriculture, by reduc- 
ing, by four-fifths, the cost of their implements.— /S^jeec/i to Grangers, 
1873. 

THE EFFECT OF MICROBES ON HUMAN HISTORY. 

What region of the earth's surface can be compared to this high 
table-laud of the continent of America — this water-shed — includ- 
ing Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the two Dakotasf Where is 
there such fertihty ? The valley of the Nile might be stowed away 
in one of our counties. Where is there such an atmosphere ? The 
very breath of God, blowing fresh from the centers of creation. 

The historian of the future will show that the great events of the 
earth's history, its marches, battles, emigrations, literatures, civil- 
izations, were all dependent on the i^resence or absence of those 
invisible forms of life, the parents of disease, the bacteria. Rome 
fell from malaria. The conquering hordes of the North conquered 
because they came from a country too cold to maintain the bacilli. 
Cast a bird's-eye view over the world and you will find that the insig- 
nificance and imi)otence of man is in exact proportion to the abun- 
dance of those swarmiug but invisible forms of life. You read the 
secret of the important part that England has played in the history 
of the world in the fact that thousands dwell every year in boat- 
houses upon the Thames River, untouched by malaria. 

Their evil influences withdrawn, there was evolved a great ■ 
brained, big-chested, rosy-cheeked race, that has expanded to all 
parts of the world ;. and that will maintain its supremacy in other 
lands until the microbes destroy the results of generations of healthy 
liviag. — Address to the Editors of Wisconsin, 1889. 

The Woi^der. When one looks at the shop windows of a great 
city, with their displays of food and clothes, money and jewelry, and 
nothing but a pane of fragile glass between these treasures and the 
hungry, cold, degraded, scowhng creatures who pass them by, the 
wonder is not that there are thieves, but that there is any security at 
all for life and property. — TJie Anti-Monopolist. 

CoMPLiMENTAKY TO A MoNEY Shake:. A loug-lcgged, grasp-. 

ing, grinding fellow named H , with an ice-house in his belly, 

and the devil in his heart, has been pitching into us because we 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 207 

thought the rights of debtors should be protected and uot abridged 
iu these trying times. H lends money for a Connecticut insur- 
ance company, and he would like a law to enable him to sell the 
debtor and his family into slavery if he didn't pay up. He regards 
us as a very bad man, and we are — from his standpoint.— T//e Anti- 
Monopolist. 

The Imagination. We are not to despise the imagination. 
There never was yet a great thought that had not wings to it : there 
never was yet a great mind that did not survey things from above 
the mountain-tops. — Ragnarok. 

The Ice Giants. There is no doubt that here and then were 
developed the rude, powerful, terrible '' ice giants " of the legends, 
out of whose ferocity, courage, vigor and irresistible energy have 
been evolved the dominant races of the west of Europe — the land- 
o-rasping, conquering, colonizing races;, the men of whom it was 
said by a Roman poet, in the Viking Age : " The sea is their school 
of war and the storm their friend; they are sea-wolves that prey on 
the pillage of the world." They are now taking possession of the 
glohG.— Ragnarok. 

Protecting Creditors. " The old Enghsh system of impris- 
onment for debt would doubtless be far preferable to our present 
[bankrupt] law."— C/</ca(/o Times. 

Precisely; the rights of the creditor must be protected. Would 
it uot be better to adopt the Chinese system and permit the money- 
lender to levy on the debtor's family and sell them ? Good-looking 
unmarried girls would fetch a high price nowadays.— T/^e Anti- 
Monopolist. 

The Public Schools. We abohsh all private schools, except 
the higher institutions and colleges. We believe it to be essential 
to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of 
all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, 
associate together. In this way, race, sectarian and caste preju- 
dices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together 
as brethren. Otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the 
Xieople split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, 
sns]Mcious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, 
b'l Iness and everything else. — Cfrsar\^ Colump, 



208 DONNELLIANA. 

The Distinguishing Characteristic of Science. The Col- 
onel possessed a good-sized library, the result of the accumulations 
of several generations ; and an odd conglomeration of books it was — 
romances, histories, narratives of travel, religious works and scien- 
tific treatises. The latter were a generation or two old, and of little 
practical value ; for it is the peculiar and distinguishing character- 
istic of science that every ten or twenty years its conclusions are all 
reversed and. set aside, as ridiculous absurdities, and a new set, 
brand-new, adopted, to be in turn east overboard, but to rule with 
pope-like infallibility while they are accepted. — Doctor Huguet. 

Man. 

A point, a dot, a little something here, 
For every gnawing, driveling, petty spite ; 

The center of drawn arrows, and the sphere 
Where wrangling passions struggle and unite. . . . 

He sleeps. The spark — identity — is gone, 

But the eternal restlessness ends not; 
The usurer elements reclaim their own 
In modes, and forms, and shapes, we know not what. 

Who, had he choice, would be a thing like this? 

A speck in the great universe, a mite ; 
Nameless and placeless; that is not, yet is; 

A lost, stray spark in a great world of light. — 1857. 

Surprises. I have no faith in men, like Vilas, of Wisconsin, 
who are surprises— who start up, without antecedent labor; who 
leave a luminous streak upon the darkness of popular astonishment, 
and burst at their culmination into showers of evanescent sparks, 
leaving nothing behind them but a hollow shell and a bad smell. — 
Journal, 1885. 

Mistaken Theories. "I have known vast quantities of non- 
sense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't 
trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare you out of 
countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by 
it." — Charles Dickens. 

Very true, and on the other hand we have known some very 
good people shame-faced to the last degree. This theory is a good 
deal like that other time-honored delusion that you can master a 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 20;) 

bull -dog if yoii can only catch his eye. We knew a man who tried 
it once. He caught the dog's eye, and the dog caught the primary 
strata underlying the seat of his pants. And the dog had the best 
of it. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist. 

Protecting Oueselves Against Ourselves. Having talcen 
all steps necessary to protect ourselves from others, we then began 
to devise means by which we m\gh.t protect ourselves from ourselves; 
for the worst enemies of a people are always found in their own 
midst, in their passions and vanities. And the most dangerous foes 
of a nation do not advance with drums beating and colors flying, but 
creep upon it insidiously, with the noiseless feet of a fatal malady. 
— CcBsar^s Column. 

The World Arrayed Against the Republic. Who can 
anticipate the quarter from which the next blow will descend ? It 
should never be forgotten that nearly all the nations of the world 
are arrayed against us, and that the enemies of liberal principles 
are numerous and active everywhere. While we may not fall upon 
that " universal war of opinion " foretold by Mr. Seward, neverthe- 
less we must expect many open and not a few insidious attacks 
upon our life. Be assured of this, that if by neglect we leave the 
avenues that lead to the national heart unguarded, they will swarm 
with our enemies. — Speech in Congress, Feb. i, 1866. 

THE WHEAT RING IN MINNESOTA. 

Liberty means property. It means that the fruit of a man's in- 
dustry shall not be taken from him without compensation. When he 
is taxed he expects to receive a good government, peace, order and 
social safety in exchange. The English revolution was in defense 
of the rights of property against the exactions of monarchy. Our 
own revolution of 1776 was in defense of the property rights of the 
colonists against taxation levied in a parliament in which they had 
no voice. Liberty means' justice; justice means the right to your 
own. When the property of a people is taken from them by any 
devices, without compensation, government is at fault; and the 
party in power can be justly held responsible for it. 

What is our condition ? The price of wheat in every tawn in 
Minnesota is daily fixed by a gentleman in Minneapolis, the repre- 
sentative of a combination of mill -owners of that city. There is no 



210 DONNELLIANA. 

competition. If competing buyers appear they are driven off by 
putting up the price far beyond what tfce wheat is really worth ; and 
as soon as the outsiders withdraw the price is lowered again to the 
old standard, or even a little lower, to cover the loss incurred in 
driving off the competing buyers. 

Artemus Ward long ago remarked that " there is a good deal of 
human nature in a man after all." We are all made substantially 
after the same pattern. If you, gentlemen, had the power to go 
into the mills of Minneapolis and buy their flour at your own price, 
would you pay more for it than it was worth ? Would you pay as 
much as it was worth ? Why should you give six dollars a barrel 
for flour if you could get it for five ? Why five if you could get it 
for three ? Would you not feel, after a few days of this kind of 
trading, that the miller ought to be very well satisfied if you gave 
him anything? — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Heavenly Justice. You were blind, you were callous, you 
were indifferent to the sorrows of your kind. The cry of the poor 
did not touch you, and every pitiful appeal wrung from human souls, 
every groan and sob and shriek of men and women, and the little 
starving children — starving in body and starving in brain — rose up 
and gathered like a great cloud around the throne of God ; and now, 
at last, in the fullness of time, it has burst and come down upon 
your wretched heads, a storm of thunderbolts and blood. — Ccesafs 
Column. s 

Divine Destiny. Blessed is the man who can feel that God 
has singled him out from among his fellows, and that the divine 
hand has shaped his destiny; and yet such men usually bear on 
their hearts and minds a burden of life-long woe. Those whom God 
so honors he agonizes. — Doctor Huguet. ' , 

Le Due's Stock Faem. The old Grange, in Minnesota, refused 
to have anything to do with politics; it emasculated itself; it re- 
duced itself to the level of Le Due's stock farm, which, it was said, 
consisted of a steer, a gelding and an Angora goat. — Speech at Her- 
man, 1SS6. 

PoMtiCAB Independence. " He hit it, that he ^nenr Sentinel 
roati; Donnellyis/nobody's child,' and he seems to ehjoy the dis- 
tinction. " — St. Paul Dispatch. 

'^ The child is father to the man " in this case. We rotate upon 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 211 

our own axis and are a solar system to ourself. Better be " nobody's 
child " than somebody's servant. The full-blooded politician walks 
with one knee crooked, his cap in his hand and a basket on his arm 
for scraps and dog's meat. We thank God that he didn't make us 
after that pattern. We would rather storm a redoubt than hang 
around the sutler's wagons.— T/^e Anti- Monopolist. 

Rizzio TO Mart, Queen of Scots. 

Remember, dear, remember 
That one fond, fond heart to thee 
Looks with the last long look of hope, 

Up from its agony ; 
That doubts and fears, and woes and strife, 
Now at the shaking gates of hfe 

Storm fearfully. 

Though from the gazer's lifted glass 
The night and all its glories pass, 
Still, with returning eve, his eye 
Seeks confident his star on high. 
And smiles to see its twinkhng light 
Shine to him through the wide, wide night. 

So in this dark world of woe. 

Of gloom above and grief below. 

My heart looks up, looks up to thee — 

Looks up and hopes perpetually. 

It will not doubt, it cannot fear, 

But thou, in light, wilt reappear; 

And as o'er heaven that little star 

Comes bright and glorious from afar. 

So wilt thou come, my own, my own. 

And fill all heaven with thee alone.— iSoS. 

A Suggestion. Cyclones and thunder-storms are simply the 
brutalfashion in which the electricity of the atmosphere and earth 
is equalized. If balloons (fed by a current of gas through a flexible 
pipe to keep them afloat, with many steel points and conducting 
wires) were raised, say 1,000 feet, and securely anchored by cables, 
would they not ofier a peaceful and continuous outlet for the streams 



212 jDONNELLIANA. 

of positive and negative electricity, and thus prevent the convulsions 
of cyclones and thunder-storms which now afflict the world?— 
Journal^ 1885, 

THE GENESIS OF A COMET. 

Now, what is the genesis of a comet? How did it come to be ? 
How was it born? 

In the first place, there are many things which seem to connect 
them with our planets. 

They belong to the solar system: they revolve around the 
sun. 

Says Amedee G-uillemin : 

" Comets form a part of our solar system. Like the planets, they 
revolve about the sun, traversing with very variable velocities ex- 
tremely elongated orbits. " 

We shall see reason to believe that they contain the same kinds 
of substances of which the planets are composed. 

Their orbits seem to be reminiscences of former planetary condi- 
tions : 

" All the comets having a period not exceeding seven years 
travel in the same direction around the sun as the planets. Among 
comets with periods less than eighty years long, five-sixths travel in 
the same direction as the planets." 

It is agreed that this great globe of ours was at first a gaseous 
mass ; as it cooled it condensed hke cooling steam into a liquid 
mass; it became in time a molten globe of red-hot matter. As it 
cooled still further, a crust or shell formed around it, like the shell 
formed on an egg, and on this crust w^e dwell. 

While the crust is still plastic it shrinks as the mass within 
grows smaller, by further cooling, and the wrinkles so formed in the 
crust are the depths of the ocean and the elevations of the mount- 
ain-chains. 

But as the ages go on and the process of cooling progresses, the 
crust reaches a density when it supports itself hke a couple of great 
arches ; it no longer wrinkles ; it no longer follows downward the 
receding molten mass within ; mountains cease to be formed ; and 
at length we have a red-hot ball revolving in a shell or crust, with 
a space between the two, like the space between the dried and 
shrunken kernel of the nut and the nut itself. 



Volcauoes are always found on sea-shores or on islands. Why ? 
Through breaks in the eartli the sea- water finds its way, occasion- 
ally, down upon the breast of the molten mass; it is at once converted 
into gas, steam ; and as it expands it blows itself out through the 
escape-pipe of the volcano : precisely as the gas formed by the gun- 
powder coming in contact with the fire of the percussion-cap drives 
the ball out before it, through the same passage by which it had 
entered. Hence, some one has said, " No water, no volcano." 

While the amount of water which so enters is small because of 
the smallness of the cavity between the shell of the earth and the 
molten globe within, this process is carried on upon a comparatively 
small scale, and is a safe one for the earth. But suppose the process 
of cooling to go on uninterruptedly until a vast space exists between 
the crust and the core of the earth, and that some day a convulsion 
of the surface creates a great chasm in the crust, and the ocean 
rushes in and fills up part of the cavity; a tremendous quantity of 
steam is formed, too great to escape by the aperture through which 
it entered, an explosion takes place, and the crust of the earth is 
blown into a million fragments. 

The great molten ball within remains intact, though sorely torn-, 
in its center is still the force we call gravity; the fragments of the 
crust can not fly off into space; they are constrained to follow th". 
master-power lodged in the ball, which now becomes the nucleus of 
a comet, still blazing and burning, and vomiting flames, and wear- 
ing itself away. The catastrophe has disarranged its course, but it 
still revolves in a prolonged orbit around the sun, carrying its 
broken debris in a long trail behind it. 

This debris arranges itself in a regular order : the largest frag- 
ments are on or nearest the head, the smaller are farther away, 
diminishing in regular graduation, until the farthest extremity, the 
tail, consists of sand, dust and gases. There is a continual move- 
ment of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the attraction 
and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash against 
each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that its 
longest diameter coincides with the direction of the motion of the 
comet ; hence, as they scrape against each other they mark each 
other with lines or strice, lengthwise of their longest diameter. The 
fine dust ground out by these perpetual coUisions does not go off 



214 TxmnELLIANA. 

into space, or pack around the stones, but, still governed by the 
attraction of the head, it falls to the rear and takes its place, like 
the small men of a regiment, in the farther part of the tail. 

Now, all this agrees with what science tells us of the constitution 
of the clay. — Bagnarok. 

The Geeat Decision, which is now Reveesed. A few years 
ago, when we asserted that the State had the right to control and 
regulate the railroad companies within its limits, we were denounced 
as a lunatic or a communist. We have filled whole columns of this 
paper with arguments to prove that either the people must control the 
corporations or the corporations must control the people ; and that, 
in the nature of things, a free people could not submit their i^ros- 
perity, their possessions and their happiness to the unlimited domi- 
nation of irresponsible railroad companies and common carriers. 
That between the two alternatives of leaving the corporations at 
the mercy of the people, or the people at the mercy of the corpora- 
tions, we could not hesitate for an instant. And now comes the 
Supreme Court of the United States and affirms our view in every 
particular. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

What is a Demagogue? That man is the true demagogue 
who, finding the people filled with fierce passions and the victims of 
general errors, fans those passions and flatters those errors, and 
thereby rides into power and wealth. But he who, in the face of 
several thousand majority, leads the forlorn hope of a minority, and 
talks up-hill against the preconceptions of a ijeople, may be in 
error, but he is no demagogue. [Applause.] It is so much easier 
to go with the current than to attempt to turn it, that all the drift- 
wood of life, the mere carcasses of politics, that float by their own 
rottenness and shine by their own decay, go with the flood, even 
though it take them out to sea. It requires strength and vigor and 
an earnest, honest purpose to buifet the tide, 

" Stemming it with heart of controversy." 

The dishonest man does not attempt it. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Statesmanship. For good purposes and honest instincts we 
may trust to the multitude ; but for long-sighted thoughts of phi- 
lanthropy, of statesmanship and statecraft, we. must look to a few 
superior intellects. It is, however, rarely that the capacity to do 



EKTHACTS Als'D SELECTIONS. 215 

54*00(1 and the desire to do good are found united in one msin.—CcBsar^s 
Column. 

A Comfortable Creed. Mary devoured everything in this old 
library, even to the prosiest sermons of forgotten divines, who had 
proved conclusively, to their delighted congregations, that all the 
human family, except a favored portion of their own little segment 
of a creed, were hurrying, at railroad speed, to everlasting damna- 
tion. — Doctor Hiiguet. 

Great Parties. Great parties represent in their beginnings 
great principles ; — in their old age great prejudices.— /oi«rwa^, 1883. 

Necessity for Cooperation. All life is a struggle and a 
destruction. In human society there are but two classes — the 
victors and the victims ; those who eat and those who are eaten. If 
the sheep would escape the wolves they must unite in measures for 
their own defense. It would be madness for them to wait in the 
hope that the wolves would meet some day in mass convention 
and adopt resolutions of justice, mercy and generosity. — Speech to 
Grangers, 1873. 

Who is Free i But gentlemen seem to forget that slavery is 
not confined to any precise condition. Every country tolerating 
slavery has affixed to it conditions peculiar to itself. The old 
Roman slavery was in many essentials different from the Southern 
institution; and modern slavery has presented many dififerent 
phases. Slavery consists in a deprivation of natural rights. A man 
may be a slave for a term of years as fully as though he were held 
for life; he may be a slave, when deprived of a portion of the wages 
of his labor, as fully as if depinved of all ; he may be held down by 
unjust laws to a degraded and defenseless condition as fully as 
though his wrists were manacled; he may be oppressed by a con- 
vocation of masters, called a legislature, as fully as by a single 
master. In short, he who is not entirely free is necessarily a slave. 
— Speech in Congress, Feb. 1, 1866. 

Mostly Fools. " Douglas Station, on the St. Paul and Pacific 
Railroad, is now the city of Donnelly. Woe to the usurer, the wheat 
scalper or the grasshopper that tries to pitch his tent therein.''— 5^ 
Paul Dispatch. 

Thanks ! What a paradise we would make of Minnesota if we 
had the power. But alas ! —we may apply to our beloved State the 



216 LONNELLIAKA. 

lajiguage of Carlyle; in reference to Great Britain : — " Great Britain, '^ 
saidCarlyle, *' contains twenty-seven million people — mostly fools. " 
— The Anti-Monopolist. 

God's JuoaMENTS. In the race of life God — who sits on the 
judges' stand — does not reward those only who make the fastest 
time, but all who get as much speed out of their beasts as they are 
capable of. — Journal, 1882. 

WHAT IS LIBERTY? 

We have a mighty stake in the preservation of the republic. 
Liberty is not merely a name ; the flag is not simply an ornament. 

The destruction of our beautiful, peaceful, equal form of govern- 
ment means the restoration of old-w^orld conditions. A "strong 
government " is but another name for a despotism ; an aristocracy 
of mone> is but an untitled nobility. Continue the evolution which 
we have witnessed in our Eastern States for fifty years longer, and 
the world will behold a ruling class as despotic, as arrogant, as self- 
ish and as powerful as any in Europe, and a working and farming- 
class as wretched and poverty-stricken and as desperate as the 
poorest peasantry of Ireland or Russia. 

What is needed to arrest this development ? A great political 
sentiment, representing an intelligent public opinion, thoroughly 
devoted to liberty and justice, (conscious that when justice dies, 
liberty sickens) ; watchful against every invasion of popular rights; 
ready to resist every aggression of that blind Sampson, Monopoly, 
who, unrestrained, would soon pull down the pillars of the temple 
and bury himself in the ruins. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Establishing New Towns. We further decree that when 
hereafter any towns or cities or villages are to be established, it 
shall only be by the nation itself. Whenever one hundred::p&rspns 
or more petition the government, expressing their desire to build a 
town, the government shall then take possession of a sufficient tract 
of land, paying the intrinsic, not the artificial, price therefor. It 
shall then lay the land out in lots, and shall give the petitioners and 
others the right to take the lots at the original cost price, provided 
they make their homes upon them. We shut out all specula^tors. 
No towns started in any other way shall have railroad or mail 
facilities. — CcBsafs Column. - 



EXTHACTS AKlJ SELECTtOlSfS. 'Ill 

G-OOD. " The residence ul" Gen. Pillow was sold at bankrupt sale 
recently at Memphis. There was no competition in the bidding, and 
the residence, worth probably $8,000, was bought by one gentleman 
for twenty-six dollars, an,d the valuable library by another for eleven 
dollars, and both presented to Mrs. Pillow." 

Good ! This shows there is something noble yet in human 
nature. In a whole city there was not to be found a single knave 
or sharper who would take advantage of the gallant old soldier's 
sorrows and necessities. Things like this make one think better of 
our common humanity. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Co:nception of God. The bigger the mind, the more room 
there is in it for the conception of God. You can't get that idea 
into crevices of craniums. — Journal, 1882. 

Igfora:nce in Public Me:n^. Napoleon said a blunder was 
worse than a crime. It may be set down as an axiom that ignor- 
ance in a public man may be as criminal as corruption, and some- 
times ten times more destructive. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Out of the Ranks. "Yes," I said, "that was hloocV^ 
" There is as good stuff in the ranks," he replied, " as over came 
out of them. The law of heredity is almost as unreliable as the law 
of variation. Everything rises out of the mud, and everything goes 
back into it." — Ccesafs Column. 

THE NECESSITY FOR IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE. 

Sir, all history teaches us that man would be safer in the claws 
pf wild beasts than in the uncontrolled custody of his fellow-men. 
And can any man doubt that he who lives in a community and has 
no share in the making of the laws which govern him is in the un- 
controlled custody of those who make the lawsf The courts simply 
interpret the laws, and what will it avail a man to appeal to the 
courts if the laws, under every interpretation, are against him ? Set 
a man down in the midst of a community, place the mark of Cain 
upon his brow, declare him an outlaw, take from him every protec- 
tion, and you at once invite everything base, sordid and abominable 
in human nature to rise up and assail him. Is there any man within 
the sound of my voice who thinks so highly of our common humanity 
that he would dare trust himself in such a position for a day or for 
an hour ? — Speech in Congress, June 7, 1867. 



218 t)ONNi:LLlAnA. 

TRUTii Hibernating, " Ignatius Donnelly is going to assemble 
himself in convention again. He does it every year, and the result 
is the same — nothing; and yet he never gets discouraged. The 
Minnesota people look on and are amused by the harmless exhibi- 
tion. This year he will meet at Owatonna on March 29, and will 
choose delegates to the National Grreenback Convention at Indian- 
apolis. '' — The New York Tribune. 

And is it not a cheerful sight in this degenerate age to see one 
bold man, year after year, proclaiming the truth, even with no hope 
of success or reward ? We are, in an humble sphere, what Horace 
Greeley was, an educator of public opinion. Truth is a crop whose 
seed sometimes has to hibernate through many winters. But sooner 
or later it matures to the harvest. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

Significant Facts. But this is not all. We paid direct and 
indirect taxes to the Government of the United States from 1864 to 
1872 to the amount of $3,402,536,432. Think of it ! Three bill- 
ions four hundred millions to the nation, one billion and twenty- 
three millions to the manufacturers ! The total paid in seven years, 
$4,426,520,656; about twice the amount of our national debt! In 
other words, we raise enough money, by direct and indirect taxes, 
to pay the national debt twice over, and yet all we really paid of it 
in that time was $427,396,541, or one-tenth of what was collected ! 

Where did it go % Go look at the palaces down East, and then 
come back and look at the mortgages on your own farms ! You 
have built up the prodigious fortunes of the nabobs of your country, 
as the slaves of the Pharaohs built up the pyramids. The rich soil 
of the virgin West has been drained to enrich the barren rocks of 
New England. Cunning brains have reduced honest muscles into 
serfdom. — Speech to Grangers, 1873. 

The Two Worlds. Living in one worlds of which we know 
little, and surrounded by another, of which we know less. — Jour- 
nal, 1887. 

The Coal Monopoly. And the worst feature of this abomin- 
able monopoly is not the enhanced price of coal to consumers, al- 
though that is represented in many a pinched and cowering family 
around darkened stoves, and in consequent suffering, disease and 
death ; but the saddest feature of this reduced production of fuel is 
starvation among the miners. These poor rden are familiar only 



ilXTHACTS AND SELECTIONS. 210 

with their one laborious and melancholy pursuit; which they follow 
deep down in the bowels of the earth. Surely they well earn the 
miserable pittance which repays their day's toil. But wbat shall be 
said of the knaves who step between the labor that produces and 
the labor that consumes the coal, and, without adding a dollar to its 
value, wring a vast and impoverishing tribute from both miners and 
purchasers '^.—The Anti- Monopolist. 

A PRE-GLACIAL POMPEII. 

Permit me to close this chapter with a suggestion : 

Is there not energy enough among the archaeologists of the 
United States to make a thorough examination of some part of the 
deep clay deposits of Central lUinois, or of those wonderful remains 
referred to by Mr. Curtis ? 

If one came and proved that at a given point he had found indi- 
cations of a coal-bed or a gold-mine, he would have no difficulty in 
obtaining means enough to dig a shaft and excavate acres. Can 
not the greed for information do one-tenth as much as the greed for 
profit? 

Who can tell what extraordinary revelations wait below the vast 
mass of American glacial clay"^ For it must be remembered that 
the articles already found have been discovered in the narrow holes 
bored or dug for wells. How small is the area laid bare, by such 
punctures in the earth, compared with the whole area of the coun- 
try in which they are sunk! How remarkable that anything should 
have been found under such circumstances! How probable, there- 
fore, that the remains of man are numerous at a certain depth! 

Where a coin is found we might reasonably expect to find other 
works of copper, and all those things which would accompany the 
civihzation of a people working in the metals and using a currency, 
such as cities, houses, temples, etc. Of course, such things might 
exist, and yet many shafts might be sunk without coming upon 
any of them. But is not the attempt worth making?— i?a^war(?A;. 

To Stop Political Bolting. Says a correspondent of the 
OJiio Farmer: "At certain seasons of the year, rams are apt to 
develop their combative propensities, and those who keep several 
of them together often have trouble on account of their injuring each 
other. It is well known that they always ^back-up' to get a start to 
butt. Stop their backing up and you disconcert them entirely. To 
do this, take a light stick (a piece of broom-handle will do)'^ about 



220 BOnNELlIANA. 

two or two aud a half feet loDg. Sharpen one end and lash the other 
end securely to his tail; the sharpened end will then draw harm- 
lessly on the ground behind as long as his majesty goes straight 
ahead about his business, but on the attempt to ' back-up ' he is 
astonished to find an effectual brake in the rear. " 

If S S had had one of those things fastened to him last 

fall henever would have " gone back " on his party the way he did. 
And as he is apt to " develop his propensity " to run for office soon 

again, we would suggest to Major K that he carefully adjust a 

broom-handle with a sharp point, in his rear, so that when he backs 
up to get " a good ready," his luminous mind may be directed to 
another train of thought. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

THE CONDITION OF LABOE IN OLD ENGLAND. 

From remote antiquity in England the lower classes owned 
certain rights of common in tracts of land. Prof. Thorold Eogers 
says : 

" The arable land of the manor was generally communal, i. e., 
each of the tenants possessed a certain number of furrows in a com- 
mon field, the several divisions being separated by balks of un- 
plowed ground, on which the grass was suff"ered to grow. The 
system, which was almost universal in the thirteenth century, has 
survived in certain districts up to living memory. '' 

This able writer shows that the condition of labor steadily im- 
proved in England up to the reign of Henry YIIL; from that period 
it steadily declined with the recent times. He makes this remark- 
able statement in the preface to his work : 

" I have attempted to show that the pauperism and the degrada- 
tion of the English laborer were the result of a series of acts of Par- 
liament and acts of government, which were designed or adopted 
tvith the express purpose of compelling the laborer to tvork at the 
lowest rate of ivages possible, and which succeeded at last in effect- 
ing their purpose. " 

Among these acts were those giving the Courts of Quarter Ses- 
sions the right to fix the wages of laborers ; and hence, as Prof. 
Rogers shows, while the inflowing gold and silver of Mexico and 
Peru were swelling the value of all forms of property in England, 
the value of labor did not rise in proportion ; and the common 
people fell into that awful era of poverty, wretchedness, degradation, 
crime, and Newgate-hanging by wholesale, which mark the reigns 
of Henry VIII. and his children.— The Great Cryptogram. 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 221 

The Bigotry of Caste. But the events which preceded the 
great war against the aristocracy in 1640, in England; the great 
revohition of 1789, in France; and the greater civil war of 1861, in 
America, all show how impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, 
to induce a privileged class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of 
its advantages. There is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of 
caste; and long estabhshed wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire 
and sword. And hence the future looks so black to me. The upper 
classes might reform the world, but they will not : the lower classes 
would, but they cannot. — Ccesar^s Column. 

Forest Culture. In the treeless regions every spot of land 
which shows a tendency to grow to brush should be carefully pro- 
tected from fire and cattle. Such a spot is nature's hint — the 
prophecy of a forest. Where experiments are made they should be 
made upon such lands or those of a kindred quality. The banks of 
lakes, streams and marshes should be taken advantage of, for there 
the moisture in the earth will compensate in part for the dryness of 
the atmosphere, while even the atmosphere itself is modified by the 
proximity of any considerable body of water. The farmer should 
plant his groves on those sides of his land from which the prevail- 
ing winds blow, and in such form as will afford the greatest amount 
of protection to the growing crops. The subject of forest planting 
should be taken up by the agricultural journals and farmers' clubs 
of the West, and premiums be given to those who do most to de- 
velop the subject, either by essays or experiments. — Speech in Con- 
gress, 1868. 

Hard on the Bachelors. ^' There is no Mrs. Tilden. Conse- 
quently the next President will not have a host of his wife's disrepu- 
table relations to provide for." — St. Paul Dispatch. 

That is a compliment fit for a eunuch. The man who will reach 
old age, unmarried, in a land so full of sweet, beautiful, amiable 
women as this America, is unfit to hold any office of honor, trust 
or profit in the gift of the people. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Good Advice for Christmas Time. We trust our readers 
will remember at this time rather the blessings they enjoy than 
their misfortunes, and will compare their condition with those below 
them, rather tban with those above them; and will thus enter upon 
Christmas time with bright and cheery hearts, and with good will 



222 BONNELLIANA. 

toward all mankind. Then let them adorn their homes with ever- 
greens, bring together family and friends, and give free vent to 
hospitality and happiness, not forgetting the many in whose darkened 
homes the sad specter Want sits waiting. — Tlie Anti- Monopolist. 

Political Abuse. I trust the time is not far distant when all 
ferocity will disappear from our politics, and all abuse of political 
opponents from the daily press of our country. As we are the most 
warlike people in the world, we can afford, therefore, to be the most 
courteous and the most gentle. It is only the coward that is cruel ; 
only the degraded that are abusive. As we march higher up the 
slope of civilization the time will come when the antiquarian will 
look back upon the fierce slanders of to-day as we now regard the 
burning at the stake of 300 years ago — a sort of horrible com- 
mentary upon the imperfectly developed condition ot the people. — 
Speech, 1885. 

What is Education ? It is a means to an end — the intelligent 
action of the human faculties. He who is opposed to education is 
opposed to the enlightenment of the people, and must necessarily be 
their enemy; since he seeks to himself some advantage out of their 
ignorance, and tries to obscure their judgment that he may the 
better mislead them. It is not necessary to demonstrate the im- 
portance of education. The common sense of mankind approves it ; 
the success of our nation attests it ; a million happy homes in our 
midst proclaim it. Education has here fused all nations into one ; 
it has obliterated prejudices; it has dissolved falsehoods; it has 
announced great truths ; it has flung open all doors ; and, thank 
God, it has at last broken all the shackles in the land ! When the 
Englishman described the North as a land " where every man had a 
newspaper in his pocket," he touched at once the vital point of our 
greatness, and the true secret of our success. — Speech in Congress, 
Feb. 1, 1866. 

MAN AND THE BIRDS. 

In our intense egotism we are very apt to forget that there is 
anything eise in the universe besides ourselves. But we look out 
through the open window, and there, amid the green leaves, the 
great drama Of life goes on; and the little winged particles are full 
of love, hate, ambition, industry, selfishness, paternal affection and 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 223 

a great many more of the emotions that sway our souls. Home is 
the same to them that it is to us; public opinion has its voice among 
them as among ourselves, and who can tell what philosophic specu- 
lations they may have in their little heads, touching the nature of 
things and the causes of the elemental changes? Does God give 
to all his creatures, some recognition, however imperfect, of Bim- 
^qM"^.— Journal, 1885. 

Absorption without Assimilation. As a physician, I knew 
there were diseased conditions of the system when the patient con- 
sumed very large quantities of food, and remained thin and sickly 
in spite of it all, or perhaps because of it all. The appetite was 
insatiable, but there was no assimilation of that which was absorbed. 
So there are minds that read, and read, and read, and profit 
nothing. A mass of information sweeps over the surface of the 
brain, but nothing sticks. There are novel-readers of this kind, 
who can remember not one thing of or about the romance they 
read a month ago; who can scarcely keep in their recollection the 

names of the characters of the novels which they are perusing. 

Doctor Huguet. 

Newspaper Abuse. You must not be misled by volleys of 
newspaper abuse. All that is easily purchased; and it might 
be said of such journals, " Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been 
slave to thousands." The longest purse always commands such 
Gatling guns of vituperation.— ^S^eec/i at Glencoe, 1884. 

The Full Mind. It is no effort for the fountain to pour itself 
out. So is it with the full mind. — Journal, 1883. 

A Maximum of Property. I should estabhsh a maximum 
beyond which no man could own property. I should not stop his 
accumulations when he had reached that point, for with many men 
accumulation is an instinct ; but I should require him to invest the 
surplus, under the direction of a governmental board of manage- 
ment, in great works for the benefit of the laboring classes.— C^5«r'5 
Column. 

The Profounder Religion. I shall not say that as he ad- 
vanced in Hfe his views did not change, and that depth of philosophy 
did not, to use his own phrase, " bring his mind about to religion, " 
even %3 the belief in the great tenets of Christianity. Certain it is 



224 BONNELLIANA. 

that no man ever X-)Ossessed a profounder realization of the existence 
of God in the universe. How subhme, how unanswerable is his 
expression : 

'' I would rather believe all the fables in the Talmud and the 
Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind ! " 

Being himself a mighty spirit, he saw through " the muddy vest- 
ure of decay " which darkly hems in ruder minds, and beheld the 
tremendous Spirit of which he was himself, with all created things, 
but an expression.— T/^e Great Cryptogram. 

The Use of Political Pakties. Parties are well enough in 
their way. As agglomerations of men holding the same opinions 
and purposes, they are a necessity ; and during periods when the 
national safety or any other great interest is at stake the partisan 
sentiment should, perhaps, be encouraged. But in periods of peace 
the voice of reason should be heard above the clamor of prejudice. 
A sensible man should always hold his mind open to the appeal of 
argument. The most ignorant man in the world is the one who is 
incapable of a new idea, even though he may have all the learning 
of the schools.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 

DIYES. 

Be assured of one thing — this world tends now to a deification 
of matter. Dives says: '' The earth is firm under my feet; I own 
my possessions down to the center of the globe and up to the 
heavens. If fire sweeps away my houses, the insurance company 
reimburses me ; if mobs destroy them, the government pays me; if 
civil war comes, I can convert them into bonds and move away 
until the storm is over; if sickness comes, I have the highest skill at 
my call to fight it back ; if death comes, I am again insured, and my 
estate makes money by the transaction ; and if there is another 
world than this, still am I insured; I have taken out a policy in the 

church, and pay my premiums semi-annually to the minister." 

— Bagnarok. 

Ai^Ti-MoNOPOLY. The Anti-Monopoly sentiment is as old as 
constitutional government. The struggles of the people of England 
against the monopolies of food, clothes, etc., created by the crown, 
paved the way to the Cromwellian revolution, and laid the founda- 
tions of free government. As long as any man, men or corporations 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 225 

grasp and concentrate in themselves rights and privileges at the 
expense of many, the Anti-Monopoly sentiment is justifiable, and 
an Anti-Monopoly party a necessity. And it is most evident that 
during the next century the struggle in this country will he to pre- 
vent organized capital absorbing the rights of the people. In such 
a battle, " Anti-Monopoly" means everything; — " Democracy " is 
a barren generaUzation. — TJie Anti- Monopolist, 1S75. 

Money Scarcity. Scarcity of money strengthens the aristoc- 
racy at the expense of the common people. Scarcity of money 
eventuates in the destruction of free institutions, by degrading the 
people below the standard of self-government. Its path is toward 
feudalism for the few and barbarism for the many. It is incompati- 
ble with progressive civilization and human freedom. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

Wants. What the world wants:— Clear heads, full bellies, 
warm backs and honest hearts. — Journal, 1884. 

Inherited Ideas. There are some thoughts and opinions 
which we seem to take by inheritance; we imbibe them with our 
mother's milk; they are in our blood; they are received insensibly 
in childhood. — Bagnarok. 

Justice and Fair Play. What do those platforms unite 
in demanding? Simply justice and -fair play for the farmers, 
the workingmen, — for all men. That the chances of success shall 
not be rendered greater, bi/ law, for one man than another; 
that one locality shall not, b?/ law, be robbed to enrich another; 
that one man shall not pay double taxes, bt/ laiv, on his lands, that 
another may escape ; . that the burdens and benefits of govern- 
ment shall be, fc«/ law, shared' equally by all; that one man's 
dollar shall not bear little or no interest, while another man col- 
lects heavy interest on dollars that never existed ; in short, that 
the rights of property shall never rise superior to the rights of man- 
kind. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 
3, 1887. 

Complimentary. " Nowhere else but in Ireland would they 
think of celebrating Daniel O'Connell's birthday on the 5th, 6th and 
7th of August." — Minneapolis Tribune. 

It takes several days for a great man, like O'Connell, to enter the 
world. The editor of the Tribune was born in the eighteenth part 



22G DONNELLIANA. 

of a second, and his birthday will never be celebrated in time or 
eternity. The day of his execution, however, may yet be remem- 
bered by a grateful people. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Irish. The Irish will compare favorably in point of genius 
with any people on the earth. Turn to England and ask her who 
was her great general, who saved her from the army of Napoleon ? 
Sir Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, who was not only 
born in Ireland, but his pedigree shows that his blood was largely 
Irish. Edmund Burke, another Irishman, and the greatest orator 
that ever spoke the English tongue, saved English aristocracy dur- 
ing the French revolution. Go to England to-day and ask who is 
their foremost general ? The answer is Wolsey, an Irishman. Re- 
turn to America and ask them who is the great general who is to- 
day commanding the army of the United States, and they will reply 
that it is that concentrated little thunderbolt of war, Phil. Sheridan. 
I tell you, gentlemen, there never was a little land on earth so 
oppressed, so downtrodden and under such unfortunate circum- 
stances that has produced such an array of brilliant talent. — Speech 
at Grand Forks, D. T., 1884. 

A Minnesota Giel. The Chicago Times tells the following 
story of one of our Minnesota girls : A girl in -^ — , Fillmore County, 
dressed up and went down town the other day. She was in a hurry, 
and threw her good clothes on rather carelessly. Her dress got 
caught some way so it did not come down behind as far as it should, 
leaving about two feet of white skirt exposed. This in itself would 
have made the boys smile, but they laughed all over when they 
observed some printed letters pn the skirt. It was made of some 
flour sacks, and the brand hadn't become obliterated. The girl 
waltzed around town, advertising herself as " A No. 1 first quality; 
for family use — warranted." 

Well, what of it ? If she was an average Minnesota girl she fully 
corresponded with the brand. We have got the brightest, smartest, 
healthiest, rosiest and most practical girls in the world ; and we 
pity the man who would publicly deny it.— The Anti-Monopolist. 

The Serfdom of the Producers. It was settled in the great 
anti-slavery contest that one individual could not be safely left to 
the unlimited control of another. If a few men are allowed to de- 
termine the degree of the farmers' prosperity, by determining how 
much they are to take from him. and how much they are to leave 



EXTBACTS AND SELECTIONS. 227 

him, it is but another form of serfdom. The essence of slavery is 
the robbery of the fruits of labor. All slaves are not sold on the 
auction block. The 'negro, dancing his wild dances in the cane- 
brakes, was a cheerful picture compared with thousands of homes in 
this great laud, where intelligent, Christian white people sit to-day 
eating the bread of bitter poverty, and gnawing at their own hearts 
in sorrow, conscious that others are rioting in the fruits of their 
to\\.— Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3. 
1887. 

Commodore Vanderbilt. Commodore Vanderbilt has given 
nothing by his will for pubhc purposes or for charitable uses. Cold, 
heartless, grasping, grinding, he died as he had lived, without a 
single benevolent thought. He got a good scare as death ap- 
proached, and sang hymns to God Almighty to save him; and talked 
about his being " poor and needy, sad and wounded; " and yet he 
would not leave a dollar to relieve those starving workingmen of 
New York, who were almost crying at his door for something to eat. 
The voice of mankind ought to cover such specimens of monu- 
mental selfishness with universal execration. — The Anti-Monopo- 
list. 

Wise Moderation. The possession of power makes a just man 
conservative, and he is indeed a sorry creatute who will use pubhc 
place to wreak private revenges. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer 
Members of Legislature, 1887. 

MAN AND THE DOLLAR. 

This is another illustration of the fact that all our laws are 
made in the interest of the creditor and against the debtor. This 
poor woman had invested $55 in a sewing-machine, while the com- 
pany had but $10 in it ; and yet the law permits the $10 owned by 
the creditor to wipe out the $55 owned by the debtor. In other 
words, one dollar belonging to the macliine company outweighs five 
dollars belonging to the seamstress. 

This is neither fair nor right. It is a part of the old barbarism 
of the feudal ages ; the creditor stands to the debtor in the same 
relation that the baron stood to the serf. The creditor and debtor 
should be equally protected. Instead of allowing the machine 
company to swallow up the $5.') paid by the seamstress they should 



228 BONNELLIANA. 

be compelled to ^ell the machine and pay her back at least all over 
the $10 due to them. 

The whole tendency of modern civihzation is to exalt the rights 
of the dollar above the rights of man.— T/^e Anti-Monopolist. 

A Word of Encouragement to the Keformers. The great 
anti-slavery contest has passed into history : it is seen through the 
heroic mist of time. Around the fact of emancipation cluster those 
noble colossi, —Lincoln, Chase, Seward and Greeley, —to-day 
honored and glorified of all men. But we can remember the dark 
and stormy days of misrepresentation, detraction, slander and 
hatred in which they lived and labored. But they fought against a 
wrong a thousand miles away, — beyond a geographical, sectional 
line. We are warring against an injustice right in our own midst, 
whose roots penetrate into every part of the body politic. Let us 
strive to do our duty in our day and generation, as they did in theirs. 
— Speech at Caucus of Farmer Members of Legislature, 1877. 

THE UNITED STATES UNDER GRANT. 

Violence, bulldozings, whippings, arson and murder on the one 
side ; and cunning, trickery, false -returns, perjury and carpet-bag- 
gery on the other. 

Sixty thousand of&ce-holders ready to plunge the country into 
civil war to hold their places; and one hundred and eighty thou- 
sand more ready to go to war to get them. 

A million people so hard driven to obtain a living that they have 
lost all courage to resist ; while millions more are below even that 
grade, and would welcome violence as a refuge from starvation. 

While over all sits a silent, grim, dangerous man, with one hand 
on the rudder, and the other holding a lighted torch — ready to 
beach the ship or blow her up. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Love. Love, after all, is simply a primal instinct imposed on hu- 
manity for the perpetuation of the race. We are all automata. Civil- 
ized man submits love to the supervision of his judgment, and there 
can be no permanent love where the natural physical affinity is not 
supplemented by the approval of a trained and cultured intelligence. 
— Doctor Huguet. 

The Seductions that Surround Legislators. But we 
must not forget our constituents — even the poorest and humblest 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 220 

of theiil — and we must labor to execute tbeir wishes, as we undei- 
stood tbem on election day. We uuist try to be as earnest as tbey 
are. A great city has its seductions and bewilderments, and a few 
weeks sometimes creates a gulf between the weak-minded repre- 
sentntive and those who elected him. And when a nabob takes him 
by the arm he forgets the scattered hamlets, and feels that he is 
himself a nabob. — Speech at Caucus of Farmer Memhers of Legisla- 
ture, 1887. 

THE COLORED RACE ON TRIAL. 

Remember that there are four millions of colored people in these 
United States, surrounded by forty millions of white people. Your 
race is on trial in this country. On trial, I say, at the bar of 
pubhc judgment. The eyes of the American people are upon you. 
Eveiy step you take is marked. You cannot, any of you, degrade 
yourselves without degrading your race? True, there is prejudice 
in this world, but there is, also, deep in the heart of man, a some- 
thing which God has implanted there ; it is the divine sense of 
justice. The white people of this country watch you with varied 
emotions and ask, what will this people do? Will they work 
out an honorable destiny among the nations of the earth? I feel 
confident you will. I recollect, my friends, that you are the only 
race on this earth that ever came in close and intimate contact with 
the white race, and did not perish before it. See how the Fhmic 
race has disappeared from the face of Europe. Once it occupied 
the continent ; now it is found only upon the remote capes and 
fastnesses of the North — in broken fragments of Lapland tribes. 
As they came in contact with the white race, they disappeared. 
Look at the Indian of our own country. As the white man advances 
the Indian perishes. He is rapidly becoming like the deer and the 
bison, a thing of the past — fast disappearing from the face of the 
earth. Why f Because he has not the civilizable characteristics 
of the colored man. — Speech to the Colored People of St. Paul, Jan. 
1, 1869. 

The Chinese Question. China has 440,000,000 inhabitants; 
the United States have 40,000,000. China could place two or three 
workmen alongside of every workman in the United States, and 
scarcely miss them from their swarming masses. The American 
workman has to live like a civilized human being, educate hia 



230 DONNELLIANA. 

children to perform the duties of citizens, and feed and clothe his 
family as American republicans should be fed and clothed. The 
Chinaman can live on twenty-five cents' worth of rice per week. He 
has no wife, no children, no books, no newspapers, no schools. Com- 
petition with such a laborer is simply impossible. This government 
of ours is based on the intelligence, the virtue, the self-respect of 
the laboring masses. If these are destroyed, then come anarchy 
and despotism ; and individual virtue and intelligence cannot exist 
in the midst of Idleness and starvation. It is true that this nation 
owes hospitality to the poor and oppressed; but what would be said 
of the man who gave the bread of his children to strangers, and 
left his own flesh and blood to starve ? — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Scandinavian Legend. Rome and Greece can not par- 
allel this marvelous story. 

"The gods convene 
On Ida's plains, 
And talk of the powerful 
Midgard-serpent ; 
They call to mind 
The Fenris-wolf 
And the ancient runes 
Of the mighty Odin." 

What else can mankind think of, or dream of, or talk of, for the 
next thousand years, but this awful, this unparalleled calamity 
through which the race has passed? 

A long-subsequent but most ancient and cultivated people, 
whose memory has, for us, almost faded from the earth, will here- 
after embalm the great drama in legends, myths, prayers, poems 
and sagas, fragments of which are found to-day dispersed through 
all literatures in all lands; some of them, as we shall see, having 
found their way even into the very Bible, revered alike of Jew and 
C hristian . — EagnaroJc. 

The Powee of the Corporations. We must not underrate 
the task before us. It is a gigantic one. Legislature after legisla- 
ture has met the enemy and gone home beaten and baffled. And 
as each new tempest of public opinion sent its breakers roaring 
into these halls, it was only to waste away in froth and foam upon 
the solid shores of corruption and cunning. — Speech at Caucus 
of Farmer Members of Legislature, 1887. 

The Fate of Atlantis. It is not surprising that when this 



i^XmACTS AND SELECTIONS'. 'I'M 

tnighty nation sank beneath the waves, in the midst of terrible con- 
vulsions, with all its millions of peoi^le, the event left an everlasting- 
impression upon the imagination of mankind. Let us suppose that 
Great Britain should to-morrow meet with a similar fate. What a 
wild consternation would fall upon her colonies and upon the whole 
human family ! The world might relapse into barbarism, deep and 
almost universal. WiUiam the Conqueror, Richard Coeur de Lion, 
Alfred the Great, Cromwell and Victoria might survive only as the 
gods or demons of later races ; but the memory of the cataclysm in 
which the center of a universal empire instantaneously went down 
to death would never be forgotten ; it would survive in fragments, 
more or less complete, in every land on earth; it would outlive the 
memory of a thousand lesser convulsions of nature ; it would survive 
dynasties, nations, creeds and languages; it would never be forgot- 
ten while man continued to inhabit the face of the globe. — Atlantis. 
A Plea for Darwin. Why should the religious world shrink 
from the theory of evolution? To know the path by which God has 
advanced is not to disparage God. — Bagnarok. 

The Truly Great Men. It is not the men who drift with the 
current and hurrah with the crowd who really serve the cause of 
humanity. It is the bold men wlio are ready to fight the crowd and 
turn back the current who alone make revolution and reformation 
possible. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

A PROPHECY MADE IN 1874. 

The more the people are plundered the more contemptible they 
will become; the more successful the corporations are, the more 
arrogant they will grow; they will thus advance step by step, from 
point to point, until legislatures become a mockery and newspapers 
a farce. A struggle will then come which will either wipe out repub- 
lican institutions in one-half the nation, or will forever prevent the 
existence of a corporation in our midst. The States will take pos- 
session of the road-beds and allow private parties to run trains 
thereon as they now run steamboats on the rivers, paying only such 
toll as will cover the interest on original cost. 

In uttering these views we must not be understood as desiring 
to produce such a convulsion. The man who foretells the approach- 
ing hurricane does not create it. But when we see corporations^ 



232 DONNELLtANA. 

established simply for purposes of transportation, becoming immense 
land -owners, reducing a vast population of laborers to the direst 
poverty, and at the same time driving hundreds of tradesmen out 
of business in a single city; and then witness their matchless 
effrontery on the one hand and the abject submission of the people 
on the other, we can see but one termination to such a state of 
affairs. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

THE CONSERVATISM OF KELIGION. 

Nor need it surprise us to find traditions perpetuated for thou- 
sands upon thousands of years, especially among a people having a 
religious priesthood. 

The essence of religion is conservatism; little is invented ; noth- 
ing perishes ; change comes from without ; and even when one re- 
ligion is supplanted by another its gods live on as the demons of the 
new faith, or they pass into the folk-lore and fairy stories of the 
people. We see Votan, a hero in America, become the god Odin or 
Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out 
Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of 
the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The 
Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. 
William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun- 
god Apollo, Indra, who was worshiped on the altars of Atlantis. 

"Nothing here but it doth change 
Into something rich and strange." 

The rite of circumcision dates back to the first days of Phoenicia, 
Egypt, and the Cushites. It, too, was probably an Atlantean cus- 
tom, invented in the Stone Age. Tens of thousands of years have 
passed since the Stone Age ; the ages of copper, bronze and iron 
have intervened ; and yet to this day the Hebrew rabbi performs the 
ceremony of circumcision with a stone knife. — Atlantis. 

The Wrecks Caused by Corriiptiok. We all know that our 
elections have become of late saturnalia of corruption and orgies of 
drunkenness. And the man who sells others sells himself, and 
when he would wreck others he wrecks himself. All over this great 
nation you will find these stranded disasters, cast away upon the 
shores of public contempt. Once they walked erect, the hope and 
admiration of their fellow-men, but the subtle seducer touched them 
with his wand of twisted serpents, and they collapsed and fell by 



i^XTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 233 

the roadside, the rotteu corpses of men, filling the ;iir with the 
stench of their disintegration. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer 3Iemhers 
of Legislature, 1887. 

The Age of Iconoclasm. '' A statute of Queen Eleanor, Avife 
of Edward I., has been placed upon the extension of the new parish 
church of All .Saints at Harby, in England. 8he died in 1290 in the 
liouse of Kichard de Weston, close to the site of the church. Queen 
Eleanor is famed in fable for having sucked the i3oison from her 
husband's arm, communicated by the poisoned dagger of an assassin 
in the Holy Land. She did nothing of the kind. The wound was 
operated upon by cutting, and the lady, who opposed the operation 
by her vehement outcries, w\^s hustled out of the King's tent." 

That's the way it goes. William Tell is proved to be a myth, 
Nero a patriot, Richard the Third a philanthropist, Pocahontas a' 
strumpet, and now Queen Eleanor, instead of sucking the poisoned 
wound, with her eyes rolled up to heaven, goes out bellowing before 
her husband's boot-toe. Where is this thing to end? — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

THE AGE OF TOLERATION. 

However strongly we may be convinced of the great and funda- 
mental truths of religion, it must be conceded that freedom of con- 
science and governmental toleration are largely the outgrowth of 
unbelief and indifference. 

In an age that realized, without doubt or question, that life was 
but a tortured hour between two eternities ; a thread of time across 
a boundless abyss ; that hell and heaven lay so close up to this 
breathing world that a step would, in an instant, carry us over the 
shadowy line into an ocean of flame or a paradise of endless de- 
lights, it followed, as a logical sequence, that it was an act of the 
greatest kindness and humanity to force the skeptical, by any tor- 
ture inflicted upon them during this temporary and wretched exist- 
ence, to avoid an eternal hell and obtain an eternal heaven. But 
so soon as doubt began to enter the minds of men ; so soon as they 
said to one another, *' Perchance these things may not be exactly 
as we have been taught; perchance the other world may be but a 
dream of hope; perchance this existence is all there is of it," the 
fervor of fanaticism commenced to abate. Not absolutely positive 
in their own minds as to spiritual things, they were ready to make 
some allowance for the doubts of others. Thus unbelief tamed the 



234 DONNELLIANA. 

fervor even of those who still beUeved, and modified, in time, pubhc 
opinion and public law. 

But in Bacon's era every thoughtful soul that loved his fellow- 
man, and sought to advance his material welfare, would instinct- 
ively turn away from a system of belief which produced such holo- 
causts of martyrs and covered the face of the earth with such cruel 
and bloody wars. — The Great Cryptogram. 

Philosophy. No philosophy is true the essence of w^hich can- 
not be stated in a single sentence. — Journal, 1883. 

The Connectio:n^ of Our Civilization with the Eemote 
Past. Our circle of 360 degrees ; the divison of a chord of the cir- 
cle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees; the di- 
vision of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and 
the second into 60 thirds ; the division of the day into 24 hours, 
each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds ; the division 
of the week into seven days, and the very order of the days — all 
have come down tons from the Chaldeo- Assyrians; and these things 
will probably be perpetuated among our posterity " to the last syl- 
lable of recorded time." — Atlantis. 

THE EEAL ISSUES. 

An age will come to which this era, with its vast monopolies, 
grinding oppressions, and impoverished laborers, will be as " the 
dark ages. " The republic never will be perfected until not a single 
form of injustice remains. 

It is to this mighty problem the mind of the age should address 
itself; not to a dirty wallowing in the dregs of civil war. 

How can the rich man be protected in his just rights'? How can 
the poor and worthy man be lifted up ? How can industry be made 
secure of the fruits of its labor? How can every home in the land 
be made to abound with plenty and shine with intelligence and 
virtue ? 

These are the real issues of to-day. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Naturally Enough. H. P. Hall telegraphs from the Demo- 
cratic convention in St. Louis, " This is h 1 itself. " And natur- 
ally enough Hall is in the midst of it. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Courts and the Railroads. Hiram T. Gilbert in his 
work, The Bailroads and the Courts, published in 1885, at Ottawa^ 



EXTBACTS AXtJ SELECTIONS. 235 

jllliiiois, shows thiit out of a total of seventeen judgments, for acci- 
tlents at crossings, rendered by circuit courts against the four lead- 
ing Illinois railroads, during eleven years, the Supreme Court of the 
State of Illinois reversed sixteen and affirmed one, by a divided 
court, after the judgment had been twice reversed. Out of a total 
of twenty- seven lower court judgments for injuries of all kinds, but 
three were affirmed. Out of sixty-three jury judgments against rail- 
road companies for negligence fifty- three were reversed, and five 
of the ten affirmations only came after the third review. In the 
same years out of fifty-three criminal cases, in which the corporations 
were not interested, the Supreme Court affirmed not less than 
thirty-two I— Speech, 1886. 

Stand Firm. Stand firm, my friends. There is something 
more of life than to live. We must work together to abolish that 
state of things where cunning impoverishes industry and then em- 
ploys part of the plunder to corrupt the poverty-stricken represent- 
atives of the people. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer Members of Legis- 
lature, 1887. 

Ehue! When Elihu Washburne received but four votes for 
President, in 1876, in the Republican national convention, con- 
taining 750 votes, the Anti-Monopolist said : " Four votes for 
Elihu! Ehue!! Phew!!! Pooh!!!!" 

A SOPHISM EXPOSED. 

"Is there any real conflict between labor and capital? None 
whatever." 

Now let us see how it will work out. The Helper says : 
" What is a capitalist f A man who has saved a part of his past 
labor and now has it to use. " 

Ergo, a rag-picker is a capitalist, for out of his past labor he has 
bought a basket and a stick : — " and he now has them to use. " Is 
there any danger of such a man as that oppressing the laborers of 
this country ? Not the slightest. Cheering reflection ? 

Or let us try it again : Is there any real distinction between 
light and darkness ? No ; because there is a point called twihght 
where darkness and light so merge into each other that you can't 
tell where night ends and day begins; and hence (according to the 
Patron^ s Helper) there is neither day nor night ! 



236 tiONNElLlANA. 

The veriest loafer in New York owns something, if it is only a 
tattered shirt ; hence he is in so much a capitalist. Jay Gould 
works day and night at his great schemes of plunder ; hence he is in 
so much a laborer ; — and hence there is no difference between labor 
and capital. This is the Patron^s Helpers logic. 

But it won't hold water. Between the concentrated capital of 
great corporations, engaged in carrying the farmers' products, and 
the labor which created those products, there is a necessary antago- 
nism; — not a necessary hostility or hate; but such a diversity of 
interest as tends to array the capital in the roads against the labor 
on the farms. It is the interest of the road to get as much for carry- 
ing the wheat as possible ; it is the interest of the farmer to give as 
little as possible. If the road compels the farmer to give too much, 
it oppresses him. If the condition is reversed the farmer oppresses 
the road. Hence there is an antagonism which should be regulated 
by aw so that neither shall oppress the other. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

THE GODS OF GREECE THE KINGS OF ATLANTIS. 

Here, theU; in conclusion, are the proofs of our proposition that 
the gods of Greece had been the kings of Atlantis : 

1. They were not the makers, but the rulers of the world. 

2. They were human in their attributes ; they loved, sinned, and 
fought battles, the very sites of which are given; they founded cities. 
and civilized the people of the shores of the Mediterranean. 

3. They dwelt upon an island in the Atlantic, " in the remote 
west, . . . where the sun shines after it has ceased to shine- on 
Greece." 

4. Their land was destroyed in a deluge. 

5. They were ruled over by Poseidon and Atlas. 

6. Their empire extended to Egypt and Italy and the shores of 
Africa, precisely as stated by Plato. 

7. They existed during the Bronze Age and at the beginning of 
the Iron Age. 

The entire Greek mythology is the recollection, by a degenerate 
race, of a vast, mighty and highly civilized empire which in a 
remote past covered large parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and 
America. — Atlantis. 

The Eeal Standaed of Greatness. She told me 1 must 



EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 237 

shake off ray lethargy, I must rouse myself to do justice to my 
genius. The South — the new South, th3 unhappy South, darkened 
by the shadows of its great disasters, humbled, by failure, in the eyes 
of the unthinking nations, overwhelmned by the numbers, wealth 
and intellectual power of the North — needed such men as I, to hft 
her up, and guide her to greater and brighter destinies. The stand 
ing of a country did not depend, she said, upon mere population, or 
the number of bales of cotton it produced, or even upon the splendor 
of its cities, or the wealth of its people, but upon the God-given 
intellects of which it could boast. — Doctor Huguet. 

A Note of Warning to Corruptionists. He who defeats 
the just hopes of a great community prepares the way for anarchy. 
When the courts fail the mob rises ; when the legislatures fail, the 
day of the Commune is at hand. — Speech to Caucus of Farmer 
Members of Legislature, 1887. 

Revolution. Revolution — God's gang-plow, which crushes the 
weeds and tears up the torpid soil for new harvests. — Journal, 1882. 

Richard III. In Richard III. we have a horrible monster, a 
wild beast; a liar, perjurer, murderer; a remorseless, bloody, man- 
eating tiger of the jungles. — The Great Cryptogram. 

Intelligence not Incompatible with Religion. The 

duty of the patriot and statesman, then, who believes liberty and 
equality to be essential to the happiness of the multitude, is to main- 
tain the cause of universal secular education against all comers; at 
the same time to lend the aid of his voice, pen and energy to all 
those influences which tend to suppress vice and ennoble the moral 
nature of man. We cannot be made to believe that intelligence is 
incompatible with religion or reUgion inimical to Uberty. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

Human Love. The very tendrils of our being seemed to be 
intertwining and interlacing with each other, like the roots of two 
plants growing closely together, in an inseparable, indistinguish- 
able mass. I realized, for the first time, what the despised passion 
called love really meant. I perceived that it was a going out of 
one's self — a divine unselfishness — a grand necessity imposed on 
humanity by Him who made us all — a merging together of two 
minds, souls, natures; a lifting up, a glorifying of the whole creature. 



238 DONNELLIANA. 

I could realize that God had enforced upon us this passion, for His 
own purposes ; He did not vilely enslave us to it, but treated us as 
his friends and co-workers, and covered our instincts with splendor 
and beauty, in which the hard lines of fact disappeared, buried in 
flowers. — Doctor Huguet. 

Development and Design. There are two things necessary 
to a comprehension of that which hes around us — development and 
design, evolution and purpose ; God's way and God's intent. Neither 
alone will solve the problem. These are the two limbs of the right 
angle which meet at the first life-cell found on earth, and lead out 
until we find man at one extremity and God at the other.— Bagnarok. 

Reformation or Revolution. We need reformation or revo- 
lution. Why should a man who perhaps does not, and who certainly 
need not, own a foot of real property, fasten himself like a wood- 
tick on the throat of laborious productive industry, and suck the 
life out of it ? —The Anti- Monopolist. 

Where the Black and White Men Came From. We are 
told by Ovid that it was the tremendous heat of the comet-age that 
baked the negro black; in this Ovid doubtless spoke the opinion of 
antiquity. Whether or not that period of almost insufferable tenl- 
perature produced any effect upon the color of that race I shall not 
undertake to say; nor shall I dare to assert that the white race was 
bleached to its present complexion by the long absence of the sun, 
during the Age of Darkness. 

It is true that Professor Hartt tells us that there is a marked dif- 
ference in the complexion of the Botocudo Indians who have lived in 
the forests of Brazil and those, of the same tribe, who have dwelt 
on its open prairies ; and that those who have resided for hundreds, 
perhaps thousands, of years in the dense forests of that tropical 
land are nearly white in complexion. If this be the case in a merely 
leaf-covered tract, what must have been the effect upon a race 
dwelhng for a long time in the remote north, in the midst of a humid 
atmosphere, enveloped in constant clouds, and much of the time in 
almost total da.rknGSs'^. —Bagnarok. 

Christianity. Are you blind? Can you not see that Christian- 
ity was intended by God to be something better and nobler, super- 
imposed, as an after-birth of time, on the brutality of the elder world ? 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 239 

Does not the great doctrine of Evolution, in which you beheve, preach 
this gospel ? If man rose from a brute form, then advanced to human 
and savage life, yet a robber and a murderer ; then reached civiUty 
and culture and philanthropy, can you not see that the finger-board 
of God points forward, unerringly, along the whole track of the 
race ; and that it is still pointing forward to stages, in the future, 
when man shall approximate the angels? — Ccesar^s Column. 

THE GENESIS OF MAN. 

The spirtual force was first expanded into multitudinous forms of 
spiritual existence, until all space was filled with them. 

Then out of the will of the Creator was born matter. 

Then God took thought to wed dead matter to living spirit, and 
put life into the clods. 

By a vast mass of cunning mechanisms — the most curious of 
which is the digestive apparatus — he makes it possible for matter 
to be converted into appliances for hfe and thought. 

Then he infused into the Uving clods that sense of right, and 
that power to think of God, which had been before the exclusive pos- 
session of his angels. 

Man's existence is a vast, persistent mivaoXe.— Journal, 1890. 

Religion axd Science. Religion and science, nature and spirit, 
knowledge of God's works and reverence for God, are brethren who 
should stand together with twined arms, singing perpetual praises 
to that vast atmosphere, ocean, universe of spirituality, out of which 
matter has been born; of which matter is but a condensation ; that 
illimitable, incomprehensible, awe-full Something, before the concep- 
tion of which men should go down upon the very knees of their 
hearts in adoration. — Ragnarok. 

Universal Moral Rottenness. This nation has nothing to 
fear from foreign invasion or domestic insurrection, but its govern- 
ment threatens to fall a prey to universal moral rottenness. The 
very fountain, the people itself, is becoming corrupted. If it were 
possible to impress one thought more deeply than all others on the 
mind of the people, it should be this: That the man who sells his 
vote, and betrays thereby his constituents, is the worst enemy the 
republic has. He brings disrepute and distrust on self-government, 
an<l does all that in him lies to set bark civilization itself: for when 



240 BONNELLIANA, 

liberty falls the world falls, and inexpressible misery must be in- 
flicted on mankind for untold generations. — Speech to Caucus of 
Farmer Members of Legislature, 1887. 

The Power of the Cohporations. A distinguished Repub- 
lican, and member of the State Senate, writing from Southern Min- 
nesota, says : " I am glad you are re-elected. Why is your life so 
burdened with severe couflicts? It really seems cruel to me that 
you, whose public record olScially stands above blot or blemish, 
should have such severe opposition at every turn. " We thank him 
for his kind words; but we cannot answer the question he asks. 
We only know that if we were pound-master of the township of Nin- 
inger, we should have the whole State agitated to drive us out of the 
position. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

The Moon. 

Say, dost thou look 
Where, on the vine-clad hills, the shadows lie, 
Like earth-chained giants mocking at the light; 
While through the grape -leaves stirs the rising song, 
And busy feet tread out each maze in joy ? 
Or dost thou glide, fearful, and pale, and cold, 
Adown the slanting ice-banks of the North, 
Where chilled life totters like a weary wight. 
Slow trembhng to the grave? The white bear comes 
Sheeted with spangling spray, and lays him down, 
Lapping his broad paws in thy quiet beam ; 
The solitary walrus loves thy light, 
And eyes thee with a thoughtful, human look, 
While gazmg o'er the gently heaving sea. 
And in my own chme thou art stealing down, 
Weaving thy white arms through the breezy wheat, 
And linking blessings 'round the farmer's home. 

— TheMournefs Vision, 1850. 

Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson is dead. However much 
we may have differed from him in our political views, we have 
always regarded him as a great and honest man. He was a sincere 
lover of his country; a sincere friend of constitutional liberty; a 
man of the roost unshaken firmness, and of the most undoubted 



KXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 241 

purity of public aud private life. His services to the cause of the 
Union, during the Civil War, were of inestimable importance. 

Time is fatal only to slander aod injustice; all that is noble in 
the career of a great man survives oblivion. Andrew Johnson the 
partisan and the politician Is dead. Aridrew Johnson the states- 
man and patriot will survive forever. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Political Abuse in Amekica. I expect that the tlood-gates 
of abuse will be let loose on my poor head. In America a man might 
just as well take a bath in his own cess-pool as run for any high 
office. When I wrote my first book, and the newspapers all over 
the country were devoting columns to it, generally of praise, I 
held my breath and trembled, aud said to myself: '' When will the 
blackguarding begin ? When will they commence to call me a liar 
and a horse-thief f " And when nothing of the sort happened, I 
almost doubted my own identity. I was like the fellow who buried 
a scolding wife. Said he to a friend the next day : " When I went 
to bed last night and did not find Maria thrashing around and rais- 
ing the devil, I began to think I had moved into a new country."— 
Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Good and Evil. There are two things which cannot be confined 
to the sources which beget them — good aud evil. They are like the 
expansive gases — they will dilate until reduced to inappreciable 
quantities. No limit can confine them, no hands can fetter them. 
Hence when you put a man in the way of doing good you benefit all 
men around him; when you confin© him to evil he gives off evil in- 
fluences like a pestilence. — Spieech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 

A TEMPERANCE LECTURE. 

We experienced a twinge of pain when we read the following : 

*' Mrs. John Neuffer, proprietress of the Cascade Brewery, at 
Rochester, was recently fined $25 and costs, in a justice's court, in 
that city, for selling beer to Captain D. H., an intemperate person, 
contrary to the statute. The costs amounted to $15. " 

Alas and alas ! It reads like an inscription on a headstone, 
sacred to the memory of a bright, able, genial, generous, old-time 
friend. 

God pity us all in our weaknesses. 

Friends, rum is an athlete no man ever wrestled with aud flung. 



242 DONNELLIANA, 

Sooner or later it "breaks tlie back of the stoutest, and leaves him a 
limp and helpless wreck, stretched in the mud. 

Talk about strength of mind to resist it ! As if the mind was a 
distinct entity, instead of being, in a materialistic sense, at least, 
the outcome of the physical system, varying with every alteration of 
the stomach or the liver. A colic will derange it; a pill will put it 
to sleep ; a drop of prussic acid on the end of the tongue will snuff 
it out. The mind indeed ! The stomach is a much more respecta- 
ble organ ; and the mind follows it about " like Mary's little lamb. " 

Never put that into your abdomen, then, as Shakespeare says, 
" that will steal away your brains." There are occasions when a 
debilitated system can take alcohol with advantage ; as it can some 
times take strychnine, opium and arsenic ; but a sensible man would 
just as soon think of making a daily beverage of the one as the 
other. 

Above all, take care of your health. Nine-tenths of the intem- 
perance, not created by custom or social habits, results from dys- 
pepsia. An overworked mind or body reacts on a weak stomach, 
and that dehcate and complicated chemical laboratory fails to 
extract from the food the elements needed in the mysterious work- 
shops of life, and then comes the craving for the artificial force of 
stimulants. So, frie"nds, treat your stomachs with becoming respect. 
They are, for you, life and happiness. See that the laboratory is 
well supplied and has a fair chance to do its work. Don't look upon 
your stomach as a mere bag to stuff '' grub " into, like Jack the 
Giant-Killer's leather sack, into which he poured the giant's gruel. 
It is the seat of life; it is the carpenter, the blacksmith, the 
machinist, the weaver, the artisan, that renews the machine called 
yourself; it patches up the exhausted muscles, it repairs the worn- 
out nerves, it pours into the brain that incomprehensible force which 
comes forth as energy, will, power, conscience; as poetry, philosophy, 
eloquence and that masterful ability which sways the world. 

In the great future the stomach, instead of being regarded as a 
mere food-hole, will come to be respected, as it deserves. Men will 
learn that the battle of temperance reform must be largely fought 
out on the tables of the people. Food and modes of cookery will be 
studied with a view to their effects on health and longevity. — The 
Anti-Monopolist. 



EXTliACTS AND SELECTIONS. 243 

The Foot-eule or the Heavens. To creatures like our- 
selves, measuriDg our stature by feet and inches, a Drift-deposit 
three hundred feet thick is an immense afiair, even as a deposit a 
toot tliick would be to an ant; but, measured on an astronomical 
scale, with the foot-rule of the heavens, and the Drift is no more 
than a thin coating of dust, such as accumulates on a traveler's 
coaf . Even estimating it upon the scale of our planet, it is a mere 
wrapping of tissue-paper thickness. In short, it must be remem- 
bered that we are an infinitely insignificant breed of little creatures, 
to whom a cosmical dust- shower is a cataclysm. — Bagnarok. 

The Office Vacant. Referring to a very small man, who 
wore a very big hat, and who had been removed from ofi&ce, the 
Anti-Monopolist remarked : " It is said that Charley's appointment 
is due to that bath Toddy took last summer. When Toddy took off 
his hat and clothes there was so little left of him that Bill King de- 
clared the ofiice vacant." 

Our Treatment of the Indians. What has been the treat- 
ment of the Indians by our Oovernment ? 

No sadder or more gloomy page presents itself in all our annals. 
Error, neglect and crime are written all over it. 

Instead of regarding the Indians as savages — helpless as brutes 
and improvident as children, to be cared for and protected as the 
courts of law protect idiots and minors — our great nation has de- 
scended from the eminence of its Christianity and civilization, and 
has entered into a struggle to drive the best possible bargains with 
the savage for his lands. The sight has been a sad one. On the 
one side, one of the great governments of the globe, of unequaled 
wisdom, sagacity and power, represented by shrewd and able 
agents; and on the other a parcel of poor untutored savages, scarce 
comprehending the transaction in which they are engaged, unable 
to read or sign the " treaty " they make, and living, while they ne- 
gotiate, upon the bounty of the very government which professes to 
meet them on terms of equality. It is needy barbarism, pinched by 
a thousand wants, competing with an affluent and all-powerfui 
gov3rnment. What savage virtue can stand up against the allure- 
ments which are spread before it f Even should the tribe have 
judgment enougb to resist ihe terms proposed to them, are not the 
chiefs purchasable ? And that which blankets and beads, guns and 



244 DONNELLIANA. 

hordes cannot effect, shall not rimi accomxjlislif Should the chiefs 
sign and the tribe resist, do not the latter become savage outlaws, 
and who shall write their history?— ^i^eec/^ in Congress, Feb. 7, 
1865. 

" Too Teue. " A friend writes us : 

" What a little thing is a drop of water in the ocean ! What a 
trivial thing is a moment of time amid the rolling centuries ! What 
a very little thing is a grain of sand in the great round globe ! What 
an unimportant factor is a single individual among forty millions ! " 
In the language of Artemus Ward, we reply, '' Too true, too true ! " 
And we add : What a little thing is five bushels of wheat to the 
acre with which to support all our ofQce-holders. Think of that and 
weep \—The Anti- Monopolist 

The ORiGi:tTAL Biethplace of Mankind. " The original birth- 
place of the human race who shall tell? It was possibly in some 
region now under the ocean, as Professor Winchell has suggested ; 
there he was evolved during the mild, equable, gentle, plentiful, 
garden age of the Tertiary; in the midst of the most favorable con- 
ditions for increasing the vigor of life and expanding it into new 
forms. It showed its influence by developing mammalian life in one 
direction into the monstrous forms of the mammoth and the masto- 
don, the climax of animal growth ; and in the other direction 
into the more marvelous expansion of mentality found in man.— 
Bagnarok. 

The Ceiminal Class. Vice is weakness. The criminal class 
are the moral and mental cripples. They are unequal to the battle 
of life. The demands of civilization are too great for them, and 
they fall back into barbadsm. The prostitute is a recurrence to 
that period which antedated marriage ; the thief belongs to that 
era when all property was held in common ; and the ruffian repre- 
sents an age when it was man's highest glory to kill his fellow man. 
The criminal class are the uncivilized class. —The Anti-Monopolist. 

The Money-Powee. The truth is that all forms of property lie 
prostrate and helpless at the feet of the money-power. That alone 
thrives in the general ruin. It is all wrong. The profits on money 
should not exceed the average profits of industry. Money is now 
the dragon which is devouring men, women and children and whole 



\illages. Where is the Hercules who is to restrain the ravages of 
this monster? — The Ant i- Monopolist. 

What Race Will be the Final Inheritors of Civiliza- 
tion? It is the destiny of the white man to overrun the world; hi.t 
it is as plainly his destiny to carry in his train the great forces which 
constitute his superiority — civilization and Christianity. We are 
exhibiting to-day the unequaled spectacle of a superior race sharir'j;' 
its noblest privileges with the humblest of mankind, and lifting up 
to the condition of freedom and happiness those who frou>tho dawn 
of time have been either barbarians or slaves. One touch of nature 
makes the whole world kin. Let us, then, be merciful in our judg- 
ment of the races of men. We know not to whose hands the torch 
of civilization may yet be committed ere the work of God, through 
man, is completed on the face of the earth. It was little anticipatetl 
by the great nations of antiquity that the rehgious mind of the 
world would be dominated, for centuries, by the intellect of an ob- 
scure branch of the Arab race. — Sj^eecU in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 

Misfortune a Tonic. Misfortune is a tonic to strong natni-es 
and a poison to weak. There is a plant in South America, a plain - 
looking, knobbed stock, apparently flowerless ; but when the wind 
blows fiercely and agitates it, the rough lumps open and the odor- 
ous blossoms protrude. So there are men the splendor of whose 
faculties is never revealed until they are assailed by the cruel winds 
of adversity. — The Great Cryptogram. 

The Great Souls of the Human Race. " In every gen- 
eration there are, it seems to me, but a few great souls, and one 
may go through life without meeting with a single one of them. It 
has never been my good fortune to encounter any person who stood 
much above his fellows. But here, in this library, are all the great 
souls of Greece and Rome, and modern Europe and America, down 
to the present day. It is as if they sat around this table, ready to 
talk to me ; ready to give me their choicest and most select thoughts 
— the distilled wisdom of then- Uves. I cannot help but think how 
many millions of boobies and envious detractors time has swept 
away into oblivion, while it has left this galaxy of greatness undis- 
turbed. It is the privilege of genius to survive whole generations 
of maligners. The contiagration of time, which consumes the mean, 
illumines the great. "— Doctor Hiiguet. 



1>4() , BONlSfELLIAy A . 

CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHINESE. 

The Citizen is glad to bring the Chinaman under Christian influ- 
ences, even though the white Christian is thereby starved to death I 
Our own labor force may be destroyed, our workmen turned into 
tramps and thieves, and their daughters driven to x^rostitution, in 
order to enable a few Chinamen to have a chance at the blessings of 
Christianity. 

Let the Citizen turn its attention to the swarming alleys and pris- 
ons of America ; to the seething sea of crime which threatens to 
engulf our civilization; to the horrible catalogue of murders, burg- 
laries, suicides, divorces, adulteiies, and embezzlements, with 
which our daily press teems, before thrusting its doctrinal dogmas 
on outside pagans. God has given Christianity charge of the white 
race of the world. The perfection of the moral condition of that 
race will be the best argument why other races shonld accept it. If 
Christianity fails to keep our own people from barbarism and deg- 
radation there is no reason why other races should be inoculated 
with it. 

And when a ^' religious " paper coolly admits that a lot of pagans 
'' can live on what an American would starve on,'' and that they 
will destroy the value of American labor, to wit, the means of life of 
the great body of our own people; and at the same time thinks we 
" ought to be glad " to have them come and produce these results, 
it exhibits a cruel heartlessness which a decent Buddhist would be 
ashamed of. 

We think this, our highest race, has the highest religion ; but it 
must look to the welfare of its " own household," rather than neg- 
lect its children to grasp at the stranger. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Americait Law. In America the law is ef&cient only against 
the miserable. — Journal, 1884. 

The New Ethnology. The tendency of scientific thought in 
ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to 
the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and 
skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to 
language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the 
result of conquest or migration. For instance, in the United States 
to-day, white, black and red men, the descendants of French, 
Spanish, Italians, Mexicans, Irish, Germans, Scandinavians, Africans, 



h\ri:A(TS AXD SJ'JLECTIONS. 247 

all s[)t'ak the English language, and by the test of language they are 
all Englishmen ; and yet none of them are connected by birth or 
descent with the country where that language was developed.— 
Atlantis. 

General Le Dec and the Goats. The General's first report 
will be mainly devoted to goats. The goat is an interesting animal. 
It has a manly beard, an imposing strut, strong virile propensities, 
and what it lacks in brains it makes up in hair ; — and therein it 
greatly resembles some men. Le Due himself has a fine beard.— T//c 
A nti- Monopolist. 

Public Schools. The public schools have yielded one magnifi- 
cent result little dwelt upon : they have amehorated and nearly 
destroyed the old, bitter, terrible rage of religious intolerance. If 
there are no longer religious riots in this country, such as twenty- 
live or thirty years ago burned churches and murdered citizens in 
the name of God, it is due to the fact that the rising generations, of 
all religions, have mingled freely with each other in the public 
schools, Jew and UniversaUst, Catholic and Protestant ; and they 
have formed friendships and associations in the years of childhood 
which have softened the asperities of religious intolerance; so that 
each has learned to respect all the good which he foundin the others. 
To separate the different religious now, into different pens, like wild 
beasts in a menagerie, would, in thirty years, breed destructive re- 
sults to that peace and harmony which should exist among the people 
of the country. The old Romans believed that the Christians sacri- 
ficed and devoured children in their secret assemblages. Divide the 
people of this country, during the period of youth, into separate 
sects, and distrust and bigotry would resume old-world propor- 
tions.— The Anti-Monopolist. 

That Depends. The Pioneer-Press says P is broad-gauged. 

That depends upon which end you contemplate him from.— T//6' 
Anti-Monopolist. 

His Politics. Our readers know that we have not professed to 
be a Democrat ; and certainly we cannot take rank as a Eepubhcan ; 
we represent the " come-outers " of both parties. We have held 
back from the Democracy, simply because we doubted whether they 
had the capacity to grasp the mighty issues of the present and for- 



2-t8 DONNELLIANA. 

get the settled issues of the past. But names are nothiog, and the 
man who is governed by prejudice is next door to the savage, — 
The Anti- Monopolist. 

God. We do not rid ourselves 'of the idea of a law giver when 
we recognize the law. The law presupposes the power that Im- 
poses the law. The statute-book presupposes the legislature.— 
Journal, 1885. 

The Authoe's Thought. The least part of an author's 
thought is that which he writes down. — Journal, 1883. 

The Monopolies Rule Everythixo. We are reaching a 
dangerous pass. We have educated our people so that they are too 
intelligent to bear slavery, and then we are crowding them into 
slavery. What will the result be? Anarchy. The monopolies rule 
everything in this country, and even from a convention like this 
their hired emissaries are not absent. — Speech in the Northwestern 
Watenvays Convention, St. Paul, 1885. 

THE RIGHT TO THE SOIL. 

The first great right struck at by the barbarism of man is the 
right of the individual to a share of the land. Conquest in the old 
time meant confiscation of the soil and its absorption into a few 
hands; hence serfdom, wretchedness and degradation. Progress 
now means simply carrying into effect the plain, simple, benevolent 
rules which God meant for his earth. The earth is for man. As 
the race cannot exist without the support aflbrded by the produc- 
tions of the soil, so the individual man cannot rest with safety upon 
any basis save his right to a share in that soil. 

The great end of government is the improvement of the condi- 
tion of the individual ; and what can more tend to his welfare than 
a share in the great source of all wealth — -the cultivable surface of 
the earth "^ For, when we consider it closely, civilization itself rests 
upon agriculture. The world's wealth has been taken from its 
bosom. This prolific mother, never wearied, has been giving of her 
strength and richness to her children through uncounted genera- 
tions. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 

A Refusal. An irreverent friend writes us that he saw a mule 
at the St. Louis Fair, and that " it was a remarkable animal — all 



li:XmACTS AND SELECftONS. 249 

legs aud ears — like H B ." But wc refuse to publish any 

such slanders against one of the clearest-headed and longest-legged 
men in the State.— T//c Anti- Monopolist 

INTERNATIONAL PAPEK MONEY. 

The human family is increasing at a tremendous rate, and the 
business and commerce of the world are increasing in like proportion; 
but all values are fixed by a metal [gold] steadily rising in value from 
its increasing scarcity, and which by its additional purchasing power 
sends all other things in the world on a down grade. 

The world is dealing on a constantly falling market ; this arrests 
production, enforces idleness, increases discontent and puts a steadily 
increasing strain on all forms of government. If the process con- 
tinues the end of this century ivUl he as stormy and revolutionary as 
was the fatal close of the last century. 

There is but one remedy — but that the world is not apt to adopt 
— and that is for the great nations to unite, by treaty, for an issue of 
paper currency in each nation, not to exceed a fixed ratio to popula- 
tion, for which not only the faith of the nation shall be pledged, but 
every foot of property in those nations ; this currency to be exclusive 
legal tender, not only in the nation that issues it, but in all tho 
other great nations party to the contract. 

This would be a her ic remedy, but it may be necessary to save 
civilization. Certainly this intelligent and warlike age cannot be 
forced back into the condition of Europe before the discovery of 
America led to the importation of the accumulated gold of Mexico 
and Peru hoarded through many centuries. 

Given the two elements of the problem, a constantly increasing 
population and constantly decreasing basis of currency, and the 
results cannot but be disastrous to the peace and safety of mankind. 

All the paper money of the world, notes, bills of exchange, 
checks, have been simply devices to supply the inadequacy of the 
metallic currency. A great civilized world must move forward on 
the same line, and estabhsh a currency that will be good throughout 
the whole world, and that can be increased in exact proportion to 
the increase of population. 

This question of the world's currency Ues at the base of civiliza- 
tion, of progress, of morality, of intellectual growth, of religious 



250 DONNMLLIANA. 

purity. If the intelligence of the world is not able to solve the prob- 
lem, the time is not far distant when it will have to choose between 
despotism and anarchy. — Speech at Duluth, Oct. 7, 1885. 

The Age of Man. If civilization and population increase for 
the next three hundred years as they have for the past one hundred, 
the pressing problem will be how to subsist the greatest number of 
people on the smallest space of ground. Everything that does not 
serve the purposes of man will be exterminated, and man will cover 
the habitable globe. Geologists tell us that there was once an age 
offish, and afterward an age of reptiles. We are approaching " an 
age of man." If the progress of the race is arrested, and the race 
nearly exterminated, by some gigantic convulsion of nature, such as 
another glacial or drift period, the future explorer will stand amazed 
at the Innumerable memorials of the race, even as' we survey to-day 
with wonder rocks hundreds of feet thick made up altogether of 
sea-shells.— T7^e Ant i- Monopolist. 

Society. '' Society '' is the mutual congratulation of those who, 
having battled their way through the breakers, meet to shake hands 
on the shore, with much love each for himself, and very little for each 
other. The smell of the dead bodies cast up by the waves does not 
disturb them. — Journal, 1885. 

The Value of iNTELLiaENCE in a Eeptjblic. There is no 
danger to society or order so long as intelligence opens the pathway 
of opportunity for poverty. The stream of progress foams and thun- 
ders into cataracts of revolution only when the craft and selfishness 
of man erect barriers to arrest its waters. It is intelligence that 
has brought us up from savagery. It is intelligence, conjoined with 
the sentiment of justice and brotherly love, that must guide us 
through the perils that now menace the world. Keform must come 
either from above or below. If it comes from above, its work will 
be lighted by the peaceful beacons of education and rehgion. If it 
comes from below, the glare of the incendiary's torch will blaze red 
and appalling amid the crash of falling institutions. — Speech at Cau- 
cus of Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3, 1887. 

An Unpleasant Suggestion. Beecher has sold himself to the 
devil and the gold-bugs. He preaches no hell and too much money. 
He may see the day that he will have no money and too much hell. 
He may find his " hard pan " a frying-pan. — The Anti- Monopolist. 



EXTMACTS AND SELECTIONS. 251 

The Spirit of Unbelief. Unbelief, therefore, has uot arisen 
from the public schools; it has descended into them from the adults. 
It has not come from the alphabet and the Arabic numerals, but 
from a spirit of skepticism in the age itself, attacking first the 
thoughtful and penetrating downward among the multitude. The 
remedy, in our judgment, is not the destruction or modification of the 
public school system, but a greater vigilance and activity upon the 
part of the churches. The school hours do not exceed thirty hours in 
the week out of 1G8. Let the pastors use a portion of the remaining 
time to train the moral nature of the young. Above all let them be 
prepared to fight Unbelief with logic and enthusiasm. — The Anti- 
Monopolist. 

The Fueotture of the " New Rich." The dwellings of the 
" new rich" look like warehouses of furniture-dealers; all is spick 
and span new, until one is almost tempted, as he wanders through 
the resplendent grandeur, to look around for the salesman and in- 
quire the price. — Doctor Huguet. 

The U:n-iversal Fear of Comets. We have seen the folk- 
lore of the nations, passing through the endless and continuous 
generations of children, unchanged from the remotest ages. In the 
same way there is an untaught but universal feeling which makes 
all mankind regard comets with fear and trembling, and which 
unites all races of men in a universal behef that some day the world 
will be destroyed by fire. — Eagnarok. 

A Distinction in Thieves. In the United States there is one 
great difference between the rich thieves and the poor ones : — the 
former are in " society ; " the latter in the penitentiary.— Jowr^aZ, 
1884. 

THE LABOR ELEMENT. 

It is probable that we may, as farmers, be called upon to co- 
operate with those members and senators from the great cities who 
distinctly represent the great labor element. That element has 
been too long speechless. It is beginning to find a voice : a voice 
that will yet fill the world. I need not urge upon farmers the pro- 
priety and justice of co-operating with them. I can conceive of no 
demand they can make inconsistent with the interests of the agricult- 
ural class. They are producers. So are we. We are the two mighty 



wiugs of civilization. Our enemies are.' almost identical. In the 
swarming workshops we find the market for our productions ; in our 
fields they find the ultimate destination of their wares. Interest, 
humanity, justice^ hnk us indissolubly together. If they are down in 
the scale of mankind, the more reason why we should try to lift them 
up. If they are oppressed, the more cause why we should defend 
them. It is to the great honor of the English aristocracy that 
they have liberahzed their government with every step of advance 
taken by the common people. In our own country civilization 
must move forward along the lines of justice, or the whole develop- 
ment of the human race must be arrested. — Speech at Caucus of 
Farmer Members of Legislature, Jan. 3, 1887. 

A PROPHECY. 

" The inventions of men to gather wealth, through rates of interest 
and dividends on watered stocks, are unlimited in their gathering 
power ; and the few have made it a constant work to befog the minds 
of the great mass of producers of wealth, and at the same time invent 
ways and means of robbing them of every dollar of wealth they pro- 
duce." — IndianajJoUs Sun. 

The slavery which applied the gyves to the limbs and the whip 
to the back was seen and known of all men ; but the slavery which 
cunningly builds a conduit from the muscles of labor and the brain 
of enterprise into the pockets of idle capital is invisible, although its 
fruits are palpable as sunlight. If republican institutions fail in 
this country, it will be because the stupid many are overn.atched by 
the adroit few. It was thought in the aforetime that — asMacaulay 
phrases it — " ten thousand men who had had no breakfast and were 
not sure where they would get their dinner would meet at the ballot- 
box to decide the destiny of a great and wealthy community;" that 
is to say, that the overthrow of the republic would come from the 
labor force of the country. But events have demonstrated that the 
labor force of the country is patient, honest and submissive ; ready 
to suffer and fight for the preservation of society and free institu- 
tions. But, on the other hand, the real danger which threatens 
the republic comes from organized and aggressive capital, inter- 
fering in pubhc affairs, controlling legislation, corrupting the ballot- 
box and demoralizing society. The time is not far distant when this 
country will witness a revolution, not as bloody, but certainly as far- 
reaching as the old French Revolution ; and if the people come out 



EXTMACT.^ AN J) SELECTIONS. 253 

of it triuLaphantly, they \Yill recast the institutions of this nation so 
that human liberty will be forever safe from the dangers which now 
threaten it. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Necessity for General Prosperity. The perfection 
of society can only be reached through prosperity ; and prosperity 
depends on wise and equal laws, and these again on the intelligence 
of the people. And so at last we find the surest cure for vice and 
immorality in the school-house and the church; the scliool-liousc! to 
fit men to know what is for their best interests; and the church to 
develop the moral nature, and save society from those peculiar vices 
which are the outcome of superabundant prosperity.— T/^e Anti- 
Monopolist. 

Gilding the Pages of our National Kecord. A Wash- 
ington writer to the Minneapolis Tribune says : 

'' The Forty- third Congress of our glorious country met for the 
opening session on Monday of the past week, and enrolled among 
its many new members the name of Wm. S. King, who promises to 
be one of the most brilliant and useful of the long list of illustrious 
statesmen that gild the pages of our national record. We, of his 
constituency, have reason to feel justly proud of our representative. " 

Think of that ! " One of the most brilliant and useful of the 
long list of illustrious statesmen that gild the pages of our national 
record!!" And this is not said " sarkasticul, " as Josh Billings 
expresses it, but in sober seriousness. And " we of his constituency 
have reason to be proud of our representative ! " Great Heavings! 
And if we are who has any right to complain? 

All that we have to say is, that if Bill takes a contract to " gild 
the pages of our national record," he'll steal the gilding and 
abstract the record. — The Anti-Monopolist. 

The True Source of Our National Greatness. This is 
a continent in process of colonization, with the whole world flocking 
in to take possession of it. The real cause of high wages is the 
general prosperity, the demand for labor, the opportunities for grow- 
ing rich, the sparseness of population compared with extents- of ter- 
ritory. If you could run another Mississippi valley of vacant, or 
half vacant, land, through the heart of Europe, the rush of settlers 
to take possession of those lands would for a generation or two 
raise the price of labor over all Europe. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 



254 DONNELLIANA. 

The Orig-in or Sun Woeship. But when we realize the fact 
that these ancient religions were built upon the memory of an event 
which had really happened — an event of awful significance to the 
human race — the difficulty which perplexed Mr. Miller and other 
scholars disappears. The sun had; apparently, been slain by an 
evil thing; for a long period it returned not, it was dead; at length, 
amid the rejoiciugs of the world, it arose from the dead, and came 
in glory to rule mankind. 

And these events, as I have shown, are perpetuated in the sun- 
worship which still exists in the world in many forms. Even the 
Christian peasant of Europe still lifts his hat to the rising sun. — 
Bagnarok. 

THE INDIANS CONSTANTLY EOBBED. 

The total number of Indians receiving annuities is 46,365. If we 
estimate each family to consist of four persons, which is a moderate 
calculation, and divide this sum of $150,000,000 among the chiefs or 
heads of families, we shall find that for each of such chiefs the gov- 
ernment has expended the sum of $13,000. 

Where, now, is all this wealth? Has it reached the Indians'? 
Have its accumulations descended from father to son ? Do we find 
it represented to-day, among the tribes, by comfortable homes and 
overflowing granaries'? No ! Upon our Western prairies are scat- 
tered this miserable, degraded, impoverished people, an everlasting 
reproach to our Christian nation and a disgrace to humanity. 
Where, then, are these great sumsf They have gone to fill the 
coffers of those who stood between the G-overnment and the Indian, 
and deceived the one while they robbed the other. 

Mr. Chairman, I feel that it is my duty to speak of these things. 
The evil results of this pernicious system have descended upon my 
own State in fire and blood. An innocent and unoffending popula- 
tion of white settlers have XDaid the penalty for years of misgovern- 
ment with their lives; and although the scenes of devastation and 
ruin and horror have passed away from my State — I trust forever 
— the system still hves, and is already preparing new stores of suf- 
fering and calamities for other communities When I have looked 
upon the humble home of the frontiersman in ashes and beheld the 
coi-pse of its owner lying gashed and bloody beside it, I could not 
but trace home the terrible responsibility for all this evil to this 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 2o') 

Capitol aud to that system which, taking charge of a savage race, 
retained them in barbarism, made no proper efforts for their civili- 
zation, and at last turned them loose like wild beasts, to glut their 
brutal passions and infuriated rage upon an unsuspecting people. 

I assert unhesitatingly and upon mature reflection that not even 
our white race could rise from barbarism to civihzation against the 
pressure of such a system as that under and by means of which it is 
proposed to civilize the Indians. — Speech in Congress, Feb. 7, 1865. 

THE KANGAROO. 

We don't propose to be outdone by The Farmer's Union, and so 
we announce that our next illustration will be a Kangaroo. 

We consider this a proper illustration for an agricultural paper, 
for the self-evident reason that it has no connection with agriculture. 

The Kangaroo is a highly interesting animal. It can sit on its 
hind legs and balance itself on its tail ; a feat which no agricultural 
editor in the United States, excepting Abernethy, has- ever yet been 
able to successfully accomplish. 

The Kangaroo carries its young ones in a pouch, in front, where 
they lie completely concealed from view, like Abernethy's breed of 
potatoes, which grow altogether under ground, and are thus grass- 
hopper proof. 

The young cling to their pouch and suck away like a lot of coun- 
try editors in the bosom of a Congressman. And wherever the Kan- 
garoo jumps the editors hang on, singiug, '' And whithersoever thou 
goest there will I go ; and thy country shall be my country." 

The difference between the young ones after they leave the pouch 
and the young ones before they leave it, is precisely the difference 
between the Democratic and Republican parties, viz : — one set is 
out and the other set is in. That's all. 

The fore paws of the Kangaroo are very small compared with his 
feet; and herein it differs from the ordinary politician, whose capac- 
ity to grab is out of all proportion to the rest of his organization. 

Few animals can look so wise with so small a head. In which 
respect also it reminds us of Abernethy. 

The culture of the Kangaroo should be introduced into Minne- 
sota. The grasshopper will not eat him, — nor, in fact, will any- 
thing else. To those who desire to diversify the crops, we would 
cordially recommend the Kangaroo. When the Fox and Wisconsin 



256 BONNELLIANA. 

canal comes into operation tbe Kangaroo will bo invaluable to jamp 
over the sand-bars, where it is too wet to go afoot and not wet 
enough to float a boat. A peck of wheat could be fastened to the 
tail of each Kangaroo, and thus that great work of internal com- 
munication be made a brilliant success. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Oun Theology. Our theology, even where science has most 
ridiculed it, is based on a great, a gigantic truth. Paradise, the 
summer land of fruits, the serpent, the fire from heaven, the expul- 
sion, the waving sword, the " fall of man," the " darkness on the 
face of the deep," the age of toil and sweat — all, all, are literal 
facts. And could we but penetrate their meaning, the trees of life 
and knowledge and the apples of paradise probably represent like- 
wise great and important facts, or events, in the history of our race. 
— Bagnarok. 

The Declaration of Independe:n^ce. We cannot fail to recog- 
nize the all-fashioning hand of God as clearly in this sublime decla- 
ration as in the geologic eras, the configuration of the continents or 
the creation of man himself. What a world of growth has already 
budded and flowered and borne fruit from tbis seed! What an 
incalculable world of growth is to arise from it in the future! — 
Fourth of July Speech. 

BLIGHTED PEOSPECTS. 

" The New York Post is ungenerous enough to assert that 
Ignatius Donnelly cannot serve his country better than by bhghting 
his own political prospects. We think, out here, that these ^ pros- 
pects ' are pretty effectually 'blighted.' " — St. Paul Dispatch. 

If it blights a man's political prospects in Minnesota to follow his 
convictions of right and duty to the bitter end, ours may be con- 
sidered as " effectually blighted." 

But we remember that the same Boston which once pelted Will- 
iam Lloyd Garrison with rotten eggs afterward carried him on its 
shoulders, and will carry him in its heart forever. 

We believe in doing right and letting the " political prospects " 
take care of themselves. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The MoifOPOLiSTS. If Congress had not interfered you would 
have placed a Mongolian, who could live on rice and rats, at the 
elbow of every American workman, and reduced him to Asiatic 
wretchedness. Your deyilisli arts have filled American laborers 



EXTRACTS AND SELECTIONS. 'J57 

with discontent, despair and communism; you are undermining the 
very foundation of the repubhc by creating a class who, having no 
hope of any improvement in their condition, have come to regard 
property and government as their mortal enemies; and on the slight- 
est provocation they will break out into riots, such as those of Pitts- 
burg and Cincinnati. From such anarchy there is no refuge, if your 
policy is to continue, but a strong government, and that means the 
end of free government. — Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

THE SEVENTH DAY. 

And this process is still going on. Mr. James Geikie says : 

" We are sure of this, that since the deposition of the shelly 
clays, and the disappearance of the latest local glaciers, there have 
been no oscillations, but only a gradual amelioration of climate.^' 

The world, like Milton's lion, is still trying to disengage its 
hinder limbs from the superincumbent weight of the Drift. Every 
snow-storm, every chilling blast that blows from the frozen lips of 
the icy North, is but a reminiscence of Ragnarok. 

But the great cosmical catastrophe was substantially over with 
the close of the sixth day. We are now in the seventh day. The 
darkness has gone ; the sun has come back ; the waters have re- 
turned to their bounds ; vegetation has resumed its place ; the fish, 
the birds, the animals, men are once more populous in ocean, air, 
and on the laud; the comet is gone, and the orderly processes of 
nature are around us, and God is " resting " from the great task 
of restoring his afflicted world. — Ragnarok. 

Education. " The city swarms with book agents and represent- 
atives of Eastern publishing houses, all of whom have an eye on the 
eminent educators. " — Pioneer-Press. 

Yes ; even as the shark followeth the emigrant ship, so the book 
agent folio we th the eminent educator; and for the same purpose — 
Something to eat ! The other day the book publishers held a meeting 
and resolved to sell at low figures to book agents, school teachers, 
etc., but to keep up prices to the common people. " Liberty! " 
said Madame Roland, as she passed the statue of that goddess, on 
her way to the place of execution, " ho w many crimes are committed 
in thy name!" "0 Education!" we echo, "how many infernal 
rascals steal themselves rich In thy name. " — The Anti- Monopolist. 



23S BONNELLIANA, 

DoiKG Justice to Donnelly. '' A correspondent asks us to 
'do justice to Donnelly.' We can't. It isn't possible. Donnelly 
will have to wait for justice till lie falls into the hands of old Beelze- 
bub." — Grange Advance. 

And when he does Beelzebub will exclaim : 

" What ! that great and good man here ! This is another Ke= 
publican trick. Here, you infernal devils, carry him up tenderly to 
heaven, where he belongs. And see — cook!— broil me Young's 
heart on the coals — and give me one of Joe Wheelock's hind legs 
to pick my teeth with. " — Anti- Monopolist, 

The Neutral Press. A new paper has been started at Reed's 
Landing; called the Press. It has for its motto : 

"Pledged to no party's arbitrary sway, 
We follow Trutli where'er it leads the way." 

That sounds pretty, but it generally means to shut both eyes 
and sing sn;all. Such papers are too often like the fellow's canoe, 
which was so delicately balanced that if he changed his chaw of to- 
bacco from one side of his mouth to the other it would upset the 
precarious craft. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

Public Life in America. As I said before, I have no ambi- 
tion to shine, and I look upon public life as discredited, if not dis- 
honored, by the kind of men who rule it. It appears to me as a 
sordid and debased struggle of little creatures for honors that fade 
from the memories of men almost as soon as they are won. Out 
of the thousands of public characters who have taken part in our 
national life, one can count upon the fingers of his two hands the 
list of those statesmen who have really left any impress on their 
age ; while a still smaller number will be remembered beyond the 
termination of the century in which they lived. I turned, therefore, 
from the temptations of this shallow and barren life to the quiet of 
my own library and communion with the mighty souls of the past— 

" Those dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns " — 

as one might turn from the sprawling and contemptible contentions 
of dogs to a banquet of the gods. — Doctor Huguet. 

Man cannot be Trusted to the Merct of his Fellow- 
men. It is too evident that when you strip a man of all means of 
self-defense, either through the courts or the laws, deprive him 



EXTMACTS ANU SELECTIONS. 25U 

of education and leave him to tlie mercy of bis fellow -men, he must 
suflfer all the pangs which our unworthy human nature is capable 
of inflicting. Who is there believes that man can safely intrust 
himself solely and alone to the mercy of his fellow-man ? Let such a 
man step forward and select his master! Let him, in the wide circle 

of the whole world, choose out that man — pure, just and humane 

upon whose vast, all-embracing charity he can throw the burden of 
his life. Alas ! there is no such man. — Speech in Congress, Jan. 17, 
1865. 

The Conflagration of Science. Have not Bacon's anticipa- 
tions been reaUzed ? Does not the great conflagaration of science, 
kindled by his torch, not only burn up the rubbish of many ancient 
errors, and enlarge the practical powers of mankind, but is it not 
casting great luminous tongues of flame, day by day, farther out into 
the darkness with which nature has encompassed us? — The Ch'eat 
Cryptogram. 

Fetching it Home to a Man. If the 'hoppers lay their eggs' 
again this fall in Watonwan County, next spring will find brother 

S a first-class Anti-MonopoUst. It is extraordinary what a 

clear perception of injustice an empty pocket brings.— T/^e Anti- 
Monopolist. 

CHRISTIANITY. 

He who follows the gigantic Mississippi upward from the Gulf of 
Mexico to its head-waters on the high plateau of Minnesota, will 
not scorn even the tiniest rivulet, among the grasses, which helps to 
create its first fountain. So he who considers the vastness for good 
of this great force, Christianity, which pervades the world, down the 
long course of so many ages, aiding, reUeving, encouraging, cheering, 
purifying, sanctifying humanity, cannot afibrd to ridicule even 
these the petty fountains, the head- waters, the first springs from 
which it starts on its world-covering and age-traversing course. 

If we will but remember the endless array of asylums, hospitals, 
and orphanages ; the houses for the poor, the sick, the young, the 
old, the unfortunate, the helpless, and the sinful, with which Chris- 
tianity has literally sprinkled the world; when we remember the 
uncountable millions whom its ministrations have restrained from 
bestiality, and have directed to purer lives and holier deaths, he 



260 DONNELLIANA. 

indeed is not to be envied who can find it in his heart, with mahce- 
aforethought, to mock or ridicule it. — Bagnarok. 

Mankikd. Battles cease, wars pass away, heroes perish, great 
men die, only mankind survives. " Only mankind is the true man; " 
only mankind is fit to toil and labor and die for. — Memorial 
Address, 1884. 

The Eagle. 

The eagle flew in upper air ; 

Its shadow crawled along the grass. 

THE TEUE DOCTRINE. 

There is a hearty glow of patriotism in this paragraph from the 
Memphis Appeal which is extremely pleasant : 

" Democrats we are, and Tennesseans, and full of love for our 
thrice-blessed South -land; but over all there laps the claim of Union, 
with its ^reat achievements and its greater destiny. God bless the 
flag, and God bless the Union, and may He strengthen all hearts, 
both north and south, to labor for an everlasting peace between the 
States." 

That is the true doctrine and the true spirit. God bless every 
man who preaches it ! And may every wretch that seeks to rise by 
planting hatred in the hearts of fellow-citizens of a common country 
perish amid all the calamities which God can inflict on the basest of 
mankind. 

We must have a nation as grand in its moral as its material 
features ; held together, not by force of law, but by force of love. 
The soil on which love flourishes is justice. 

Let us make our flag truly the representative of fair play, gener- 
osity and brotherly love, so that if any foreign foe assails it the men 
of the South will spring to arms to defend it as readily as the men 
of the North. — The Anti-Monopolist, 1874. 

The Plunderings or the Wheat Eing. But the excuses 
do not end here. In addition to these flne discriminations as to 
grade we have pretenses of all kinds : — one year the wheat is too 
wet; another year it is frozen; another year it is smutted ; another 
year it has too much cockle in it. And f len they go into 
the question of the genealogy of the wheat. Fellows who have no 
pedigree themselves insist that every kernel of wheat must have 
one ; and to sell a load of wheat is equal to proving the title to an 



EXTRACTS ANh SELECTIONS l^Gl 

estate. If it can be established that a fugitive kernel of " Lost 
Nation " has strayed into one of his sacks, the farmer may have to 
forfeit the whole profits on his entire crop. He might j ust as well 
trace back his paternity to a man that was hanged, as to have the 
buyer feel around in his sack and cry out triumphantly, " There's 
Lost Nation ! ^'—Speech at Glencoe, 1884. 

Tell the Teuth. Tell the truth. Brother H., if it loosens 
your front teeth in the extraordinary effort. — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Elizabethan Period. To the average man and woman 
around us that era-making Elizabethan period was bat a name. To 
us it was the visible interference of the hand of God in the affairs 
of men, through the mediumship of mighty intellects, who have 
affected the minds of all subsequent generations, and whose power 
will increase with the growth of population and the development of 
civilization on the earth. — Doctor Huguet. 

Intelligent Ignorance. We have always said that the people 
of Zumbrota were the most intelligent and at the same time the most 
stupid on the continent; for there is a kind of intelligence that is as 
unprogressive, as intolerant and as conservative as ignorance itself; 
it is the intelligence of the man who "knows it all,'' and whose 
mental constitution is incapable of the reception of a single new 
idea. Hence such a man is always the victim of cunning decep- 
tions. — Tlie Anti-Monopolist, 1877. 

City and Country. A poor man is oftentimes rich in the 
country, while a rich man may be poor in the city. — Journal, 1883. 

The Work of the Plow. Set the plow moving, and the re- 
sult is wealth. But the wealth is only valuable as it is able to com- 
municate and interchange itself with other wealth. Hence the 
necessity for roads. Where these roads converge there are towns 
and cities, and these give birth to greater roads, increasing hke the 
veins as you approach the heart of commerce. What next? Re- 
lieve the primal animal necessities of man, and his higher nature 
comes into play — it begins to dart out and reach at new subjects. 
It observes, it inquires, it reflects. New wants arise with new 
knowledge, and these again beget other wants. GTive a man wealth, 
and civilization comes to him clad in a thousand attractive shapes 
and colors. It is said that the earth taken from the depths of mines. 



262 DONNELLIANA. 

where it has slept for thousands of years, if exposed to the sun's rays 
will develop all manner of novel and singular plants. So when 
civihzation beams upon the mind of man, it awakens the seeds of a 
multitude of new wants of which he was before unconscious. Soci- 
ety is the interchange of wants. Whenever you afford man the 
opportunity to improve his condition you widen the area of civiliza- 
tion. Every bushel of wheat grown is a contribution to the wealth 
of the world, and, therefore, to the comfort of the human family. 
Hence we may say that every plow set moving on the plains of the 
West is felt in its consequences through all the populations of 
Europe. — Speech in Congress, May 7, 1868. 

AmePvICA. What a divine task is this, given to each of us, to help 
build up such a nation, on such an arena, and with such principles! 
Is it not good to live in such a day, and to take part in such a work ? 
— Memorial Address, 1884. 

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD PROVED. 

"Indeed!" I said, warming up, for I, too, was conscious of 
Mary's presence. " Indeed ! why, you use the very intelligence 
which God has given you to deny that there is an InteUigence in the 
universe. You conceive of a great work-shop without a master me- 
chanic. You perceive a million delicate adjustments in nature, and 
you conclude that those adjustments adjusted themselves. You 
would have design, but no designer. Consider it but a moment. 
To permit you to deny God, with your thoughts and your tongue, 
there have to be ten thousand curious and cunning inventions applied 
to your own body, so subtle that science has not yet been able to 
apprehend, much less explain, but a few of them. The process of 
thought is inexplicable on any physical basis. How can a mass 
of pulpy matter, which we call the brain, dart out lines of some- 
thing that shall travel to the remotest borders of the milky way, 
and weigh, as in a grocer's balance, the very planets and suns? If 
you would deny God, you must begin by denying yourself, for the 
power to think that there is or is not a God implies a thought-power 
somewhere in the universe of which your intellect is a fragment or 
fraction. It is impossible to conceive a vast creation without a gen- 
eral intelligence. A creation possessing only spots of unconnected 
intelligence, scattered here and there, self-born, self-luminous, and 
mortal, cannot be." — Doctor Ruguet. 



EXTRACTS AND HF.Li:CTIONS. 263 

TWO STOEIES. 

Good old Abraham Lincoln used to tell a story of two drunken 
Inen who got Into a fist fight. Each had an overcoat on.. They 
" fit and they font, " they rolled and they tumbled, and when they 
got through with the battle each man had fought himself out of his 
own overcoat and into his opponent's overcoat. 

The Minneapolis Tribune is now striving lustily to fight its way 
into our overcoat. It is denouncing '' plundering railroad combina- 
tions" and '^ robbers of the people" as vigorously as ever we have 
done. And now, lo ! and behold! the Pioneer-Press, which, time out 
of mind, has denounced all opposition to railroad rings as '' commu- 
nism" of the most red republican stripe, is now trying hard to get 
into our capacious overcoat also. 

A Spanish cavalier was riding his mule one bright summer day; 
a fly bit the mule's long ear; he lifted his leg to scratch off the offend- 
ing insect, when hisfoot caught in the stirrup, and, unable to extricate 
himself, he began to struggle about on three legs. ''Hold on! " 
cried the astonished cavalier, " if you are going to get on I will get 
off. " We feel very much the same way. If these Eepublican sheets 
are determined to mount our hobby would it not be well for us to 
seek another steed? — The Anti- Monopolist. 

The Miracle of Life. The scientist picks up a fragment of 
stone— the fool would fling it away with a laugh — but the philoso- 
pher sees in it the genesis of a world; from it he can piece out the 
detailed history of ages; he finds in it, perchance, a fossil of the 
oldest organism, the first traces of that awful leap from matter to 
spirit, from dead earth to endless life; that marvel of marvels, that 
miracle of all miracles, by which dust and water and air live, 
breathe, think, reason, and cast their thoughts abroad through time 
and space and eternity. — Ragnarok. 

The Public School System. The interest of the public school 
system is the interest of the free institutions of this nation. No 
blow can be struck at its existence that will not endanger the heart 
of the repubhc. Co-eval in birth, co-equal in life, they will be con- 
temporary in death. 

When the golden sun ceases to shine upon the marble high 
schools of the East, and the log-built schools of the Western clear- 
ing, it will look its last upon our great and good government. If 



264 LONNELLIANA. 

once, from the grasp of the poor man, shall be wrested this univei- 
sal system of education, dearer to him than those liberties which it 
interprets or protects; if once the exclusive university or the im- 
practical college' shall supplant or suppress it, woe to that principle 
which declared man equal with man — woe to that declaration which 
brought down the British eagle flying and raised on high the ban- 
ner of a free people. They will be neutrahzed — they will be for- 
gotten. — Alumni Speech, 1853. 

A VALENTINE TO A LITTLE GIRL. 

Winds, blow fleetly to lady mine 

This leaf of love from her Valentine. 

Tell her I love her as angels love 

Their starry harps in the realm above ; 

Where never is sadness and never is sighing, 

And never is wail unto wail replying ; 

Where thoughts come not that are darksome and dreary ; 

Where tasks rise not that are lonesome and weary ; 

But all is as bright, in that blessed place, 

As the laugh that lives on her sunny face. 

Tell her I wait till her womanly bloom 

Shall beam hke a rose in a bower of gloom ; 

And all that is beauty's, and all that is worth's, 

Shall mingle and meet in her features of gladness ; 
And all that is heaven's, and naught that is earth's. 
Shall touch her pure spirit with trouble and sadness. 

—1853. 
A Laugh. The fellow laughs as if it hurt him. A pang passes 
over his face, but he controls it at once, and once more looks dejected. 
—Journal, 1884. 

Proofs of Deity. Who regulates the growth of the eye-brows 
and eye-lashes^? If they grew like the hair or beard, the savage or 
the beast could not see. The beasts have no scissors, and the sav- 
age at first had no cutting instruments. Who is it watches every 
hair, and puts his finger on the end of it, and says, " Thus far shalt 
thou go, and no farther. "—JbwrwaZ, 1890. 

The Leadership of Women. It is an auspicious sign for the 
future of the human race when women, who in the olden time wer© 



KXTBACTS ANT) SELECTIONS. :>(i:> 

the slaves or the playthings of men, prove that their more delieale 
nervous organization is not at all incompatible with the greatest 
mental labors or the profoundest and most original conceptions. 
And if it be a fact — as all creeds believe — that our intelligences 
are plastic in the hands of the external spiritual influences, then we 
may naturally expect that woman — purer, higher, nobler and more 
sensitive than man — will in the future lead the race up many of the 
great sun-crowned heights of progress, where thicker-brained man 
can only follow in her footsteps. — TJie Great Cryptogram. 



[THE END.] 



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Treatise on Electricitjr, etc. A 
Home Book of Medicine and 
Hygiene. 

■J HE Little Giant has thou- 
sands of facts of general interest 
wl- ich are not found even in the 
bulky Cyclopedias, and no other 
book is so handy for quick con- 
sultation. It quickly settles ar- 
guments and pea. eably ends dis- 
putes. 

The Little Giant Cyclo- 
pedia is published in one com- 
pact volume of 449 pages,printed 
from clear type on the best 
quality of Bible Paper. _ The 
margins are small, making it 
possible to present in a handy 
volume more printed surface 
than IS usually contained m 
books ten times as bulky. The 
binding is neat, rich and durable. 

Nothing approaching it in 
completeness has ever before been published at less than $5.00, and for all practical purposes 
it is far .superior to any compendium of general information retailing at from $6.00 to $10,00. 

Price, in Flexible Morocco, Gold Stamping, Red Edges, $1.00. 

Sent post-paid to any address on receipt of price. 

ArUMTC AAFAIMTPn TO INTRODUCE THIS BOOK 
AUblN 1 J) W AIN i dU IN EVERY TOWN AND TOWNSHIP 

F. J. SCHULTE & CO., Publishers, 

298 DEARBORN STREET, OHIO-A-OO- 




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